Karnataka govt drags its feet over restarting PhD overseas scholarship

The criticism for cancelling a scholarship two years after it was introduced has been growing louder with students, writers, and activists demanding its reinstatement. The state government had started offering scholarships in 2021 for PhD students studying abroad, under Prabuddha, a programme for Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) students, but cancelled it in October 2023. Critics say that the state government’s decision to cancel the PhD scholarship is not only based on flawed logic but would do a great disservice to the overall development of the communities it is meant for.

The Social Welfare Department’s Prabuddha scholarship programme sponsors students from SC and ST communities who get admission to postgraduate courses at top ranking foreign universities. In August 2021, the programme was expanded to include doctoral degrees, but the department shut it down in three years, citing high costs. The cancellation of the PhD scholarships came as a huge blow to students. Despite an assurance by Minister for Social Welfare HC Mahadevappa to continue the scholarship, it has not been reinstated.

Speaking to TNM, Neha Chandrappa said she was deeply disappointed that the scholarship was cancelled for PhD students. She has been admitted to the PhD programme in the Department of Sociology, Criminology and Social Policy at the University of Liverpool. When she obtained admission to the course in January, she applied for the scholarship only to find that it had been cancelled. 

Neha, who holds a Master’s degree in gender studies from Ambedkar University in Delhi, has urged the government to reinclude doctoral degrees in the Prabuddha scholarship. She has met various government officials and even Minister Mahadevappa, requesting them to reinstate the scholarship. She said that the Minister had orally assured her that the government would bring the scholarship back. The Minister also tweeted on July 21, assuring that the scholarship would be continued and he had instructed his officers to do so. But nearly three weeks down the line, there is no indication that the Department has reinstated the scholarship.

Asked why she wanted to study abroad, she said that it was at Cambridge University that “Babasaheb” realised that the discrimination he faced in India did not exist elsewhere and that he had urged Dalits to study abroad if they could. 

Neha, who did her postgraduate dissertation on the intersectionality of caste and gender with regard to Devadasis in north Karnataka, said that it was important for people to study their own communities. “Upper caste people write about Dalits based on what they have read. But when oppressed people do research, there is a different quality to it because it comes from their own experience. Oppressed people understand other people’s oppression better.”

In July, the Students Federation of India staged protests in 11 districts, including Koppal, Haveri, Vijayanagara, Dharwad, Kalaburagi, and Kolar, demanding that PhD sponsorships be included again in the Prabuddha scheme. State president of the SFI, Amaresh Kadagadde, told TNM that the scholarship must be reinstated and that the SFI would start a campaign this year to spread more awareness about the Prabuddha scholarships to urge more SC and ST students to apply for it. 

Flawed logic

In an order dated October 7, 2023, the Social Welfare Department said that in three years it spent over Rs 8.61 crore on nine PhD students. The Department said it spent an average of Rs 95 lakh for each PhD student, while a one-year postgraduate course cost between Rs 35 and 40 lakh and a two-year course cost Rs 50-60 lakh. “The amount of money spent on one PhD student could support at least two or three postgraduate students,” the order said.

A senior government official in the Social Welfare Department said that the overseas PhD scholarships had been scrapped to spend the money “optimally.” He said that the state government was also responsible for students pursuing PhDs in India. “There is a backlog of arrears for students studying here. They are not able to get Rs 15,000 per month.”

Bengaluru-based thinker and lecturer Hulikunte Murthy, who holds a doctoral degree himself, told TNM that the government’s logic in cancelling the PhD scholarships was flawed because it prioritised quantity. “Development can be of two types. One is where you provide basic necessities: roads, housing, etc. Then there is academic and intellectual development. Research, that too at a foreign university, has the potential to dramatically change the perspective of Dalit students and, by extension, whole communities. You can’t say that there’s no benefit in that.”

The government official also said that the Comptroller and Auditor General, which audits every scheme, could raise questions about “wasteful expenditure.” This is an attempt to gauge whether or not a certain amount of money is being spent efficiently and whether it could have a better impact if used for other purposes, the official explained. “For example, in the US and Europe, PhDs are fully funded. Some universities in the UK too fund PhDs,” the officer said, adding that the Department could be asked to explain why it was funding PhDs when funding programmes were already in place. 

Hulikunte Murthy said the government was falling back on flimsy excuses to cut back on scholarship expenditure. “The government has been diverting the SC sub-plan funds for general schemes. What they should be doing is increasing the overall expenditure on scholarships to cover more students, instead of moving around existing resources within a scheme between different beneficiaries.”

Read: Karnataka govt under fire over decision to use SC/ST funds for other schemes

The government official denied the charge that the government did not have funds. He said that in the past year, the government had spent Rs 70 crore towards the Prabuddha scheme and the number of students supported has risen substantially from the past. He said that in 2014-15, the Social Welfare Department sponsored 21 students with scholarships amounting to Rs 4.70 crore. In 2021-22, the government had given Prabuddha scholarships to 70 students, followed by 98 in 2022-23, 152 in 2023-24, and 200 in 2024-25. 

The officer said that the proposal to reinclude PhD scholarships had been sent to Social Welfare Minister HC Mahadevappa and that the decision was likely to come through by the end of the week.

Neha is supposed to join her course by the first week of September. “I am not making this demand just for myself. It is for the whole community. If I am standing here as a woman, an SC person, it is because of Babasaheb. He gave us our rights, and he is my inspiration.”