The state of scholarships for minorities (GS Paper 2, Social Justice)
Context:
- In the past few years, the Centre has discontinued two key educational schemes for religious minorities, narrowed the scope of another and gradually cut down on the expenditure incurred on multiple programmes of the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
Why are there scholarships for religious minorities?
- India is home to over 30 crore (20%) people from religious minority communities. These include six religions notified under Section 2(c) of the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992.
- Among them, Muslims make up the largest religious minority but face challenges in various sectors. Their participation in salaried jobs is low and many are engaged in the informal sector, characterised by low wages, weak social security and poor working conditions.
Sachar Committee:
- The Justice Rajinder Sachar Committee was constituted by the UPA government to look into the social, economic and educational standing of Muslims in India.
- In the report tabled in Parliament in 2006, the Sachar Committee concluded that the Muslim minority was neglected in almost all dimensions of development.
Ministry of Minority Affairs:
- Around the same time, the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government accepted the long-pending demand for a Ministry of Minority Affairs in 2006.
- The new Ministry was to “ensure a more focused approach” on issues affecting the notified minorities, especially “educational empowerment, economic empowerment, infrastructure development and special needs.”
What are the welfare schemes?
- Over the past 20 years, the Central government has implemented roughly 10 schemes to provide educational empowerment to religious minorities.
Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme:
- The Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme was one of the first central sector programmes implemented by the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
- The scholarship was initially awarded to minority students from class 1 to 10 and ranged between ₹1,000 and ₹10,700 for each selected candidate. The scheme has now been discontinued for classes 1 to 8, only covering class 9 and 10 in its revised form.
Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme:
- The Post-Matric Scholarship Scheme was for students of class 11 and above (till Ph.D).
- It aimed to give minority students access to quality higher education, with a scholarship ranging between ₹2,300 and ₹15,000. The funds for this scheme increased from ₹515 crore to ₹1,065 crore this fiscal year.
Merit-cum-Means based Scholarship Scheme:
- The Merit-cum-Means based Scholarship Scheme targeted professional and technical courses at undergraduate and post-graduate levels.
- Eligible candidates in any of the 85 institutes listed under the scheme are reimbursed full course fees, while those in other institutions are reimbursed course fees worth ₹20,000 per annum.
- The scholarship scheme saw a major reduction in funds in 2023-24. It was allotted ₹44 crore in 2023, while last year’s allotment was ₹365 crore.
Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF):
- Another central sector scheme was the Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF). The scheme provided financial assistance for five years to research scholars pursuing M.Phil and Ph.D. from institutions recognised by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
- Under the scheme, junior research fellows received a grant of ₹31,000 for the first two years while senior research fellows got ₹35,000 per month for the remaining tenure.
Padho Pardesh scheme:
- The Padho Pardesh scheme was launched to provide better opportunities for higher education abroad, providing an interest subsidy on education loans for overseas studies to students belonging to economically weaker sections of minority communities.
- However, this scheme was discontinued from 2022-23. The scheme benefited 20,365 beneficiaries since its inception in 2006.
Begum Hazrat Mahal National Scholarship:
- The Begum Hazrat Mahal National Scholarship was for meritorious girls to pursue higher secondary education and was provided by the Maulana Azad Education Foundation (MAEF).
- The scholarship has had zero allocation in 2023.
Naya Savera:
- The Naya Savera was a separate programme launched to provide free coaching to minority students for entrance to technical and professional courses and competitive examinations.
- In the Union Budget 2023-24, the scheme was allotted ₹30 crore but the Centre has since discontinued the scheme stating that the New Education Policy 2020 does not support coaching programmes.
Scheme for Providing Education to Madrasas and Minorities (SPEMM):
- The Scheme for Providing Education to Madrasas and Minorities (SPEMM), a centrally sponsored umbrella programme, has a sub-scheme, the Scheme for Providing Quality Education in Madrasas (SPQEM), under which recognised madrasas receive financial assistance to introduce ‘modern’ subjects such as science, mathematics, social studies, Hindi and English in their curriculum.
- The scheme was allocated ₹10 crore for the financial year 2023-24 — more than 90% less than the allocation in 2022-23, which was ₹160 crore.
How much has the budget reduced?
- An analysis of the latest Ministry of Minority Affairs data shows that beneficiaries of the first six central educational schemes mentioned above dropped by around 7% in three years, between 2019 and 2022. While a total of 67.3 lakh minority students were awarded scholarships in 2019-20, only 62.6 lakh benefited in 2021-22.
- The MANF and the Begum Hazrat Mahal National Scholarship took the biggest hit during this period; MANF beneficiaries dropped from 2,580 in 2019-20 to 2,061 in 2021-22, while girls benefiting under the scholarship saw a dip of 44% in three years.
- The expenditure on the six schemes also declined by 12.5%.
- The Budget allocation for the Ministry of Minority Affairs this fiscal reduced by 38% as compared to the year 2022-23 when it was allocated ₹5,020.5 crore (revised to ₹2,612.6 crore).
- A 2022 report by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) highlighted a “declining trend” in the share of the overall budget expenditure towards minorities.
- The CBGA found that the allocation of funds for the year 2022-23 was not in line with proportional representation of minorities.
- It also concluded that utilisation of the budget under the scholarship schemes appeared to take place in the last quarter of each financial year, which meant that beneficiaries were receiving their scholarships only towards the end of the academic year.
Why is educational aid necessary?
- As pointed out by the NITI Aayog in its Strategy Document-2018, affirmative action is the need of the hour to improve the socio-economic status of religious minorities, particularly Muslims, who continue to lag behind the rest of the population in several areas.
- There is a significant disparity in education accessibility between Muslims and the general population, with Muslim representation in total enrolment declining as one moves to higher levels of education.
- Experts worry that scrapping scholarships and limiting the scope of others such as the pre-matric scholarship and the Begum Hazrat Mahal National Scholarship will adversely affect the community and impact their enrolment rate, which is already worrisome.
All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE):
- The All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), 2020-2021, conducted by the Ministry of Education, revealed that Muslim students were significantly behind other communities in terms of higher education enrolment.
- While overall enrolment recorded a 7.5% increase, the enrolment of Muslim students dropped from 5.5% (21 lakh) in 2019-20 to 4.6% (19.21 lakh) in the academic year 2020-21. Of the total 4.13 crore college students, less than 20 lakh Muslims are enrolled in higher education institutes.
What is the way forward?
- NITI Aayog has suggested enhancing pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means scholarships as well as the MANF and national overseas scholarships, recommending a 15% annual increase from 2019-20.
- It also recommended increasing the number of scholarships for girls from minority communities by 10% every year.
As Pragyan digs deep into moon, scientists at a VSSC lab turn their gaze to solar wind
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
Why in news?
- Scientists at the Space Physics Laboratory of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) are getting ready to unravel the secrets of the solar wind as the Aditya-L1 mission, meant to study the sun, lifts off in September.
PAPA payload:
- The Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA) payload aboard Aditya-L1, one of seven scientific payloads aboard the challenging mission, was developed by the SPL to gain deeper insights into the phenomenon of solar wind, as the constant stream of charged particles from the sun is called.
- The PAPA payload will study the composition of the solar wind.
- It will look at the energy of electrons and the energy and mass of protons and ions in it. The study will also cover the angular variations.
Aditya-L1 mission:
- The ISRO describes Aditya-L1 as the “first space-based Indian mission to study the sun” from a halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the sun-earth system.
- Weighing roughly 8 kg, the PAPA payload shares space on the Aditya-L1 spacecraft with six other payloads developed by sister ISRO units and other scientific establishments collaborating with the ISRO.
- The payloads are designed “to study the chromosphere, the photosphere and the outermost layers of the sun using electromagnetic and particle detectors”.
Where is Aditya L1 going?
- Aditya L1 will position itself in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
- This strategic location will enable Aditya L1 to continuously observe the Sun without being hindered by eclipses or occultation, allowing scientists to study solar activities and their impact on space weather in real time.
- The L1 point is a unique location in space where the gravitational pull of two large masses, in this case, the Sun and the Earth, precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them.
- This equilibrium allows a spacecraft to maintain its position with minimal energy expenditure.
- The L1 point of the Earth-Sun system affords an uninterrupted view of the sun and is currently home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite SOHO.
Objectives:
- The Aditya L1 mission will take over 100 Earth days after launch to reach the halo orbit around the L1 point.
- The 1,500 kg satellite carries seven science payloads with diverse objectives, including but not limited to, the coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, coronal magnetometry, origin and monitoring of near-UV solar radiation, and the continuous observation of photosphere, chromosphere, and corona.
- One of the major objectives of the mission is to study the reasons behind the formation and composition of solar wind and space weather. It will also provide information about how coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares are formed.
- These combined observations promise to unlock the mysteries behind solar dynamics and their effects on the interplanetary medium.
Way Forward:
- The ISRO will use an XL variant of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) to place the Aditya-L1 spacecraft in a low earth orbit.
- Once launched, it will take 125 days to travel to its destination at L1.
