Any amount of money that is being spent on the Dalits and poor in the management of RSS-BJP’s political perception is a national waste. During the UPA era, the Sangh had used its might to try foil Dr Manmohan Singh’s move to get the Food Security Bill passed by the Parliament. While for Dr Singh, it was a very important legislation for the benefit of the poor and dalit, the BJP-RSS raised hell protesting the welfare move as it would have endangered their narrow Brahmin-Baniaclass interest.
While RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has been emphasising that Dalits and tribals must be empowered by imparting proper education (read Sangh-dominated cultural education) his protégé Narendra Modi has been depriving them of education ever since he came to power in 2014. He has betrayed the Dalits and poor by slyly discontinuing scholarships meant for SC/ST and minority students.
Ending the targeted scholarships is not merely about refusal of financial aid to the poor and vulnerable classes, particularly the SC/STs and religious minorities such as Muslims, Christians among others; it also is a sly design to deny them the opportunity and right to become the part of the national mainstream. Not only would this move of Modi stymie their efforts to ameliorate their social and economic condition, it would also virtually deny them the right to upward mobility. That would mean lower enrolment and higher dropout rates for students from the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Class communities.
Expectedly, this is nothing short of political betrayal and it is beyond comprehension how the RSS chief Bhagwat could allow Modi to indulge in this kind of blatant anti-Dalit act. Ironically, Modi has been harping for close to a decade now that he and his government were committed to emancipating the socio-economic condition of the Dalits and the poor.
Furthermore, a Dalit woman scholar is facing the threat of potential jail term because of the contemptuous approach of the Modi government towards the Dalit and SC students. The woman scholar has been served with a bailable warrant by the district court of Ludhiana. The college has withheld her certificates, and following the action of the court, she even cannot appear in any job interview.
The Dalit woman, who did her B.Ed. between 2017 and 2019 from the private Guru Nanak College of Education (GNCE) in Ludhiana, Punjab, had, like many other Dalit students in several Punjab colleges, handed over a blank cheque to the institution during admission. The college apparently wanted to use the cheques in case the Post-Matric Scholarship (PMS) for Dalits, which was to pay for Dalit students’ education at the institution, never arrived from the government.
Some of the colleges submitted these cheques at the banks. Since the scholarship money had not been credited to her account, the check bounced. She was not the lone victim. Cheques of some other women students too had bounced as they did not have the money in their bank accounts to make up for their governments’ failure to pay for their scholarship, to which they were entitled. The bank approached the court and she was directed to furnish a security bond of Rs 25,000 in court before the next hearing in February; else, the court said, the bailable arrest warrant would turn into a non-bailable one and she might be arrested anytime. Conviction can bring upto two years in jail.
When the Centre squeezed its funding for a Scheduled Caste scholarship six years ago, it triggered a chain of events that has led to a hapless young Dalit mother being served with an arrest warrant for a bounced cheque. The scholarship which has been in vogue since 1945 following a demand from Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar met with the first hiccup in 2017 when Modi government decided to entrust this responsibility to the states.
The number of the Dalits and poor students is not so huge that Modi government could not pay the scholarship from its fund. This tactics reinforces the fact that in the RSS and BJP worldview, Adivasis and Dalits should not have access to education. Stopping the scholarships for SC-ST students is therefore exactly in line with the Sangh outlook.
The post-matric scholarship scheme for Scheduled Caste students has been in existence since 1944 and has helped innumerable students to pursue post-matric courses starting from class 11 onwards, with the government meeting the cost of education. Due to this scheme, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (higher education) among the SCs has increased from six per cent in 2002-03 to 23 per cent in 2018-19.
It is distressing that a key central scholarship scheme to help over 60 lakh Scheduled Caste students of classes 11 and 12 to complete their schooling has nearly shut down across more than 14 states after the Centre ended funding to states under a 2017 formula.
These senior students from the Scheduled Caste categories are faced with a funds crunch from the Centre, as the latter provides only 10% of the scholarship scheme. The most prestigious scholarship named after independent India’s first education minister, Dr. Maulana Azad, was closed a couple of years back. Though the students have been protesting against this reckless, anti-minority state action, Modi government refuses to relent.
The Maulana Azad National Fellowship was launched in 2009 with the aim of closing the education gap among Muslims, but which remained open to all religious minorities. This was after the high-level Sachar committee recommended in 2006 that the government take specific measures to address the educational gap between Muslims and other communities in India. Muslims formed 14.2% of India’s population, but students from the community constituted only 5.5% of enrolments in the country’s colleges and universities, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education conducted in 2019.
It is worth mentioning that the Sachar Committee set up in 2005 by the UPA government had pointed out that Muslims were socially, educationally and economically lagging behind other communities in India. The comprehensive report painted a bleak picture, showing that the gap between Muslims and other communities increased as the level of education rose. It cited the 2001 Census to note that while 7% of India’s overall population aged 20 years and above were graduates or held diplomas, among Muslims this number dropped to 4%.
Modi government discontinued the Fellowship on the pretext that it was overlapping with other schemes which cover students from minority communities. Recently, Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge sought to know from Modi what will his government gain by “snatching away” the money from poor students. Kharge pointedly asked: “Narendra Modiji, your Government has shut down Pre-Matric Scholarship meant for SC, ST, OBC and Minority students of Class 1 to Class 8. What is the point of depriving scholarships to poor students? How much will your Government earn or save by snatching this money from poor students?” It remains to be seen if these flagrant assaults on right to education by the BJP-RSS brigade diminish their electoral prospects in the Lok Sabha 2024 general elections, and to what extent. (IPA Service)
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