25 million meritorious students from deprived sections to be tracked across India

NEW DELHI: The Centre would now track 25 million meritorious students belonging to Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) across India to check whether they are getting government benefits promised to them.
In a major welfare outreach, the ministry of social justice and empowerment is working on creating a central database of all meritorious students from deprived sections who are entitled to government benefits. The state governments have been asked to collect data of all students belonging to SC and OBC segments who have been receiving pre-matric and post-matric scholarships and other fellowships from the Centre.

As per the government’s statistics, there are 6.4 million SC students getting post-matric scholarships and 15 million OBC students. The different schemes to support meritorious students include pre-matric scholarship to SC students and to children of those engaged in occupations involving cleaning and prone to health hazards, post-matric scholarships for SC students, top class education for SC students, national fellowship, national overseas scholarship and free coaching for SC and OBC students.

“Overall there are 2.5 crore students from SC and OBC segments that are being supported through government’s various scholarship schemes,” a senior social justice and empowerment ministry official told ET. “But there is no real monitoring of the scheme. We do not have data as to whether they have got all instalments and they have access to their bank accounts. The Centre releases money to the state governments and they disburse the amount.”

The ministry is now in the process of collating data from states, which would become a central repository. It would have details including name of students in each village, phone numbers, the amount received as scholarship and the date on which scholarship was disbursed. The exercise follows a survey conducted during the first phase of lockdown in April when the ministry reached out to students with basic questions on whether they had access to online education, scholarship money and other essentials. The poor response to the survey showed that the ministry did not have any contact with these students. “This underlined the need for a central database for the students. We disburse it to states but then sometimes this support does not reach the beneficiary. This system would provide live tracking of students,” said the official. The Centre has allocated Rs 5,772.33 crore for its various scholarship schemes for SC and OBC students.