Govt gets poor marks in paying scholarship funds

Kolkata, October 16: Five months after state Finance minister Asim Dasgupta announced a Rs 10-crore fund in state budget to help meritorious students from economically poor backgrounds, his intentions are lost in the bureaucratic maze.

The Rs 10-crore fund lies unused, and not one economically backward student has gained in all these months.

According to an official from the state higher education department, one of the reasons could be that the government forgot to create a proper channel to identify the poor but meritorious students. “The government’s machinery lacks the efficiency to fish out all these children who need help,” the official said.

Interestingly, when chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee recently gave away Rs 5,000 each to some such students who had had commendable results in Madhyamik and Higher Secondary examinations, he was spending from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund.

“Identifying so many children is a gargantuan task, and the government is not equipped to handle that,” the official, who did not want to be named, said.

In fact, the children who gained from the CM’s fund were identified by the state Information and Cultural Affairs department, whose officials culled the names from media reports that followed the declaration of Board examination results.

Shibaprasad Mukherjee, general secretary of the All Bengal Teachers’ Association, said legislators are now looking out for poor and meritorious students in their constituencies to spend from the special fund. “The MLAs are (at present) looking for such children, so the process is taking time,” Mukherjee said.

“We will definitely come forward if they (MLAs) need our help.” Mukherjee’s union, incidentally, is affiliated to the CPI(M).

But teachers from various city schools said the government would never be able to pull off the work without the help of school headmasters from across the state.

“How can MLAs choose the students?” Ratan Laskar, general secretary of the Secondary Teachers and Employees Association, asked. “They are just wasting time and money; and after all this effort the identification will be flawed.

“There is a huge gap between the promises made and the reality. The state government does not seem to be eager to help the poor. The budget allocation seems to be just an election stunt.

“What else will you call the lackadaisical attitude of the education department? They are already five months late and it doesn’t look like they will give away the scholarships this year.”

However, higher education minister Sudarshan Roychowdhury said a meeting would soon be held to decide the issue of awarding scholarships to the poor but academically brilliant students. “One meeting was held on October 11,” the minister said.

“Though we are running a little late we are sure that the scholarships will be handed over in the second week of November.”

Asked about the delay, he said: “I admit that things are a tad slow but these things need foolproof planning. We are going to plan accurately so that matters do not go haywire later.”