The Government of India announced the discontinuation of the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) — a fellowship for minority students in India pursuing an M.Phil or PhD, on 8 December.
Along with this, it also announced that the pre-matric scholarship for minority students will no longer be applicable to students from Classes 1 to 8. The move has led to student protests at universities across India, as well as sharp responses from other members of affected minority communities.
What did the Maulana Azad National Fellowship provide for minority students? Why has the fellowship been scrapped now? And how many students are likely to be affected because of the scholarship and fellowship's discontinuation?
Why has the Fellowship Been Discontinued?
According to Minority Affairs Minister Smriti Irani, the MANF scheme is being discontinued because it "overlaps with various other fellowship schemes for higher education".
Additionally, the Centre added, the reason behind discontinuing the pre-matric scholarship for Classes 1 to 8 is that the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009 makes it obligatory for the government to provide free and compulsory education to all children till Class 8.
The discontinuation of the schemes has led to backlash from students across India. Apart from protests at universities, many students also took to Twitter to condemn the Centre's move.
The demand to roll back the decision has also been made by various parliament members, including by the — Pritam Munde — the Bharatiya Janata Party's MP from Beed, Maharashtra.
Why Was The Maulana Azad National Fellowship Created?
The Sachar Committee, which was constituted in 2005 to assess the socio-economic and educational conditions of Muslims in India, recommended that the policies of the government should “sharply focus on inclusive development and mainstreaming the community while respecting diversity.”
The government took multiple measures to implement the recommendations of the committee — including the launch of fellowships like the MANF, for the upliftment of students from minority communities in India.
MANF was implemented in 2009 and provided five-year fellowships in the form of financial assistance to students from Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Sikh communities, who are pursuing an M.Phil or PhD.
How Do The Scholarships Help Minority Students?
Shahid Ayub, a PhD candidate at the University of Kashmir told The Quint that “the Maulana Azad National Fellowship doesn’t only help me support my education and research, but at times, also support the needs of my family.”
Ayub is a Gujjar-Bakarwal from Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district. The Gujjar-Bakarwal community is listed under the Constitution's Scheduled Tribes list. Ayub has been a beneficiary of the MANF since 2020.
“A lot of students stop preparing for jobs in order to focus on their research. These fellowships are the only thing that support their in research. Fellowships like MANF serve as a hope for many minority students.”
Mohammad Ashraf, President of Pehchan Foundation, a Pune-based NGO that works for minority education told The Quint that “the reason given by the government to stop pre-matric scholarship for classes 1 to 8 is pretty vague. The scholarship was started in the first place to support students who are not able to get the benefit of the RTE Act. Discontinuing it is like depriving one section of the society from education.”
How Many Students Benefit from The Scholarships?
The Union Ministry of Minority Affairs offers three scholarships to minority students — pre-matric scholarship, post-matric scholarship and merit-cum-means-based scholarship.
As per the data provided by the government, a total of 6,722 candidates were selected for the MANF fellowship between 2014-15 to 2021-22.
Here's a look at the beneficiaries of the pre-matric scholarship, post-matric scholarship and merit-cum-means based scholarship:
Data from the Minority Affairs Ministry.
(Photo: PIB Screenshot)
Ashraf adds that every year lakhs of students belonging to minority community are dependent on pre-matric scholarships for their primary education.
How Will the Discontinuation Impact Students of the Minority Community?
“This will have a direct impact on minority students, especially Muslim students who come from a financially weak background. As a result, it is going to have an impact on representation of Muslims at different levels in our society,” said Jeetendra Meena, Assistant Professor at Delhi University.
He further told The Quint;
"Moreover, the argument that the MANF overlaps with other similar scheme does not stand ground and is baseless, because a fellowship distribution system is already in place, under which a student cannot avail more that one fellowship"
"Through this decision, the government is stopping a huge section of society from giving their contribution in nation building. Discontinuation of MANF is a political decision. It is a part of the continuous attempt to target one section of the society," he added.
Professor Praveen Jha of Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for Economic Studies and Planning told The Quint that “India’s budgetary allocation towards education is anyway too less, it is like a drop in the ocean. However, when it comes to scholarships and fellowships, with whatever provisions we have, a decision like this hits very hard to that segment of the population which was getting something out of it.”
"In that sense, even though it was never great in terms of overall coverage, it meant a lot for a small segment of the population. And we have taken that away for no reason at all," Prof Jha added.
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