Mumbai: TheGovernment has decided to the put an end to the national means-cum-merit scholarship scheme that was intended to offer financial support to 1 lakh gifted children, whose parents’ annual income was below Rs 1.5 lakh. The reason behind such a decision is the fall in bank interest rate. As per sources, the fundof Rs1000 crore for the scholarship scheme, which had been designed on the lines of the American model of scholarships, has now been wound up.
According to the scheme, the money from the scholarship fund had been provided quarter-annually to full-time students of Class 9 from government, government-aided or local body schools. The students received the scholarship till the time they passed out of school, after Class 12. To avail the scholarship of Rs 6000 per year, students were required to appear for 2 exams involving multiple-choice questions, a scholastic aptitude test as well as a mental aptitude test.
In the year 2008, it was announced by the Finance Minister that a corpus fund of Rs 750 crore would be created in the State Bank of India. The principle yield of this fund was to be utilized for funding the scholarships under the scheme. According to the ministry plans, the idea for setting up the fund was to add Rs. 750 crore to the corpus fund for three consecutive financial years and increase the amount to Rs 3000 crore. However, this had been unsuccessful, as only Rs.250 crore had been added to the fund in 2009, making the total amount to Rs 1000 crore.
When the corpus fund had been initially created, the rate of interest that had been decided for the fixed deposits was 9.5%. However, the rate of interest had been brought down by the Bank to 5 % per annum in July last year. This has led to the finance ministry winding up the corpus fund. In addition, the Centre for Civil Society had conducted an analysis of the fund and had found that the pass percentage of students had been very poor, which was resulting in a limited number of beneficiaries of the scholarship. Now that the corpus fund has been wound up, talented students from the economically weaker backgrounds would have to depend on the amount that will be allocated to the scholarships scheme during annual budgets.
