Months of efforts by students, student groups, and activists who put pressure on the state government to reinstate the PhD scholarships under the Prabuddha programme have paid off. A few days ago, the state government issued a new order enabling students from Scheduled Caste communities to pursue doctoral research in select universities abroad. 

The Social Welfare Department issued an order reinstating the PhD scholarship for SC communities with two major changes. Although the order was issued on August 8, it was not immediately made public. 

Prabuddha is an overseas scholarship programme that funds degree and masters programmes for SC and ST students. It was expanded to include doctoral degrees as well in 2021, but later cancelled in October 2023, citing high costs. The new order applies only to SC communities due to an administrative bifurcation in November 2023 which removed ST welfare from the purview of the Social Welfare Department. 

Under the previous rules, the scholarship supported PhD courses only in universities ranked within the top 100 on the QS World University Rankings. Now, it has been extended to the top 250 universities. Another condition is that scholarship winners work in India for a minimum of two years after being awarded their PhD.

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The reinstatement of the scholarships, activists and students say, will benefit students from some of the most marginalised communities in the state. 

Neha Chandrappa, a postgraduate degree holder, applied for the scholarship in January only to find that it had been scrapped and pursued the matter with the government and politicians along with activists and student groups. “I am very excited. This is a victory for the community,” she said. She has been admitted to the PhD programme in the Department of Sociology, Criminology and Social Policy at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. She said the fight to get the PhD scholarships extended to ST students would continue.

Ha Ra Mahesh, state president of the Karnataka Baudhara Sangha and state general secretary of the Bahujan Samaj Party, one of the activists who took up the issue said they met many government officials and tried to meet Social Welfare Minister HC Mahadevappa too. “We protested outside the Vidhana Soudha and did a Facebook live along with Neha and her family. Our voices reached the people they were meant to. We managed to put pressure on the government,” Mahesh said.

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However, he said, “Only half the battle is won. It’s a good thing that they’ve raised the number of universities to top 250, but other issues need to be resolved.” The Social Welfare Department runs similar scholarship schemes for OBCs and minorities but the number of universities they can apply for is higher. Scholarships for OBCs are given for universities with a QS ranking of up to 1,000 while it is 500 for minorities. “The government should make it uniform for all. Let them make it 500 or 1,000 for SC, ST, OBC and minority communities so that it benefits more students.”

Mahesh said that the government should also raise the income slab under Prabuddha for SC aspirants. At present, candidates with an annual income of Rs 10 lakh are eligible for the scheme. “Even if a family earns Rs 1 lakh a month, it isn’t enough to educate children abroad.” Mahesh said that they would demand that the government raise the annual income limit to Rs 15 lakh. 

Post-Phd jobs

One of the new conditions for availing the scholarship is for students to work in India for a minimum of two years. The condition had been introduced so that “the knowledge and talent acquired abroad could be used for the development of the country”, the order said. 

A senior government official in the Social Welfare Department said that the rules for this hadn’t been framed yet and that the order was issued as the government did not want to delay the scholarships. A system could be worked out where students could work anywhere in India and not necessarily in government-run institutions, he said. “We will frame rules based on a wider stakeholder consultation that will include the PhD students, top educational institutions and government departments,” he said.