Students begin postcard campaign

All India Student Association (AISA), taking the snail-mail route to highlight its ongoing fellowship demand movement, has launched a postcard drive on Wednesday.

According to an AISA office bearer, scholars from across the country will be sending postcards to the Union Minister of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Smriti Irani, urging her to commence the fellowships for researchers in central universities.

“The campaign has been kicked off in various central universities, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Delhi University, which is the epicentre of the movement,” said Sucheta De, state president of AISA.

Slogans such as “Education had value, now it has a price too”, “WTO go back” and “Stop privatisation of education” will be written on the postcards,” De added.

“The post mail campaign is in response to the review committee’s comments that students did not give a representation,” Shehla Rashid Shora, an AISA office bearer said. Shora, who holds central panel post in Jawaharlal Nehru University, conveyed, “The review committee, which was formed by the MHRD for assessing fellowship demands of the students, instead of coming up with a solution has alleged the protestors of not sending their representative, which is baseless.”

“This is our representation, what else they want to hear from us,” questioned Shora. “If the review committee wants to hear more from us, they should contact us directly,” added Rashid.

Last year in October, the ministry had scrapped the scholarships. The step affected 35,000 students who were doing their research in central universities across the country and getting fellowship without having the National Eligibility Test (NET) or Junior Research Fellowship certificate. The decision prompted students to launch the Occupy UGC protest against MHRD and the University Grants Commission.

However, the HRD Ministry had promised that all existing fellowships will continue and the reconsideration will only affect future researchers. To this the students claimed that it was yet another attempt to alter the morale of those pursuing higher studies. Despite the announced cuts, students are demanding an expansion of its scope as a majority of the 1,12,812, PhD students are out of the purview of the scholarship.