The scrapping of Maulana Azad National Fellowship is wrong
The sudden scrapping of MANF comes as a shock to the students of minority communities. However, to only comprehend this as a loss to the minority communities would be narrow-sighted. The entire academia stands to lose from this move
As human beings, we are faced with choices all the time. We are always evaluating our options and making decisions. Of all the reasons that make pursuing a PhD a daunting decision, the lack of financial security is significant. Only 0.5% of all the students enrolled in higher education are enrolled in PhD programmes in India.
The scheme’s objective was to financially assist students of six minority communities: Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians, as they pursued MPhil and PhD degrees. (ht photo)
Despite being a competitive and cumbersome process, enrolling in a PhD programme does not guarantee financial support. In central universities, only ₹5,000 and ₹8,000 per month (non-NET fellowship) are available to PhD scholars. In recent years, there has been talk of discontinuing non-NET fellowships and suggestions for replacing them with selective fellowships. As a result, students compete for other fellowships and scholarships in search of more promising financial support.
One such prominent fellowship used to be Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF), named after the first education minister of India -- Abul Kalam Azad. The scheme was primarily an outcome of the recommendations of the Sachar Committee that acknowledged the Muslim population’s poor educational and occupational status compared to other social groups in India. The scheme’s objective was to financially assist students of six minority communities: Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Zoroastrians, as they pursued MPhil and PhD degrees.
The ministry of minority affairs was implementing the fellowship through the University Grants Commission (UGC). However, on December 8, the student community got a rude jolt as the Union minister of minority affairs, Smriti Irani, informed the Lok Sabha that the Centre had decided to scrap MANF.
The reason: MANF overlapped with other fellowship schemes for higher education, which covered minority students. The move is bound to seriously impact students of minority communities who were counting on MANF to pursue their PhDs.
Fellows were selected for MANF through the same UGC NET-JRF exam conducted by the National Testing Agency. MANF was on par with the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) regarding the rate. JRF is one of the most sought-after fellowships, with a stipend of ₹31,000 per month for the initial two years and ₹35,000 per month for the next three years, along with contingency and HRA.
The cut-off for JRF, however, soars exceptionally high. Consider the example of the latest cycle’s JRF cut-off percentile. As disclosed by the NTA, the cut-off percentile for the unreserved category stood at 99.35 for Political Science. This means the last person to get JRF in Political Science scored more than 99.35% of the candidates’ scores in the same exam.
Qualifying for JRF involves intense competition, and only some students can succeed. Although, for the disadvantaged categories, namely EWS, OBC, SC/ST and PwD, the cut-offs for JRF are different and significantly lower than the unreserved category. But for minority students, there is no provision for a separate cut-off for JRF. Instead, they had the provision of MANF, which the government has now scrapped.
Qualifying the UGC NET was a precondition for being considered for MANF; a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Per cycle, 500 students were to be selected for MANF; in total, 1,000 students annually. The minister stated that between 2014-15 and 2021-22, 6,722 students were selected under MANF, and ₹738.85 crore were distributed for the same.
The reason for discontinuing the fellowship is not clear or convincing. It has left many agitated and sceptical.
First, not all the students who were covered under MANF are covered by other fellowships.
Second, students are already barred from availing offellowships from more than one source at a time. The students are only eligible to get MANF/JRF once they’ve declared that they will not receive monetary benefit from any other source. The stated problem of overlapping remains unclear. However, the problem of students availing multiple fellowships simultaneously is an implementation problem and could have been tackled by careful operationalisation.
The sudden scrapping of MANF comes as a shock to the students of minority communities, possibly with the potential of deterring a considerable number of them from pursuing PhD degrees. However, to only comprehend this as a loss to the minority communities would be inadequate and narrow-sighted. The entire academia stands to lose from this move.
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) today undertake two primary functions; research and teaching. Not only do HEIs function as sites of knowledge creation (via research), butthey also produce knowledge producers (via teaching). Enabling access to HEIs for students of minority communities is crucial for forging diverse and inclusive discourses with the voices of the marginalised.
Deterring aspiring researchers of such communities would not only suppress their presence in the student body but would further reduce their representation in faculty positions in the years to come. This is so because holding a PhD degree will be a compulsory qualification for recruiting assistant professors from 2023.
Maintaining an inclusive representation in university space and academia is crucial, especially in Indian society, which is highly stratified and hierarchised. This is precisely what MANF aimed to do; making higher education more accessible for the marginalised and facilitating their representation in the Indian higher education system.
There are more far-reaching consequences to this move than what meets the eye. Higher education is like an investment. The kind of education we receive, the degrees we earn, and the experiences and social contacts we gather on campuses can determine the quality of our lives.
The educational, occupational and social mobility of the marginalised groups is at stake. This central government’s decision has brought into question the credibility of the spirit shown in the NEP 2020 document, which claims to envision high-quality higher education with “equity and inclusion”.
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