Sanction fellowship amount, remove 200-limit intake: PhD students from 2022 batch march to Vidhan Bhavan

Around 50 students left from Mahatma Phule Wada in Ganj Peth at noon for Vidhan Bhawan in Mumbai. Pune’s Lok Sabha contender from Congress Ravindra Dhangekar also attended the protest. Participants shouted slogans and sang songs, demanding educational aid without which, students said, they will have to give up on their dreams of higher education.

Their major demands are that all fellowship amounts that are pending for over a year be paid immediately, that new batches be formed for this academic year, the 200-limit on intake be removed and all batches on whom this limit was applied retrospectively be granted the fellowship as per previous rules.

“The first year fees have been filled, but we don’t have funds for the next year,” mentions Pravin Balaji Gaikwad, a PhD student who has applied for the BARTI fellowship. “It has been two and a half years since February 2022 when my PhD admission was fixed. I have still not received the fellowship and without funds, my entire research has stopped,” said Gaikwad.

In October 2023, the Social Justice and Special Assistance department announced a limited intake of 200 in the PhD fellowships granted by these three institutes, drawing flak from aspirants from these three institutes. But the problem for students of 2022, especially of BARTI, has been that the limit on intake, which came in 2023, was retrospectively applied to the batch of 2022, whose admissions should have ideally been completed in the beginning of 2023.

Gaikwad said that the students who are eligible for the fellowship categories have to keep protesting in one way or the other every year, from hunger strikes to dharnas and so on. This march from Pune to Mumbai was the last straw.

“My PhD research topic deals with saving the Earth (observed under environmental studies)- green accounting using environmental science. I have been doing this for two-and-a-half years,” explained Devanand Chavan, a PhD student from Pune University. “These students deal with research based on science and technology, information that really needs to be brought about for the development of society, do not work with superstitions or the concept of God,” he continues.

“I have left my job and work, to come fight for this fellowship,” notes Gaurav Sangle, who has applied for the Mahajyoti fellowship through his PhD programme at Pune University.

Tanuja Pandit, another Mahajyoti fellowship aspirant from Satara said, “Physics is my PhD subject and my topic deals with capacitors. I need to buy chemicals, apparatus, beakers, and various other equipment. All of this is not available in every lab, we have to buy a lot of it by ourselves. You have to pay thousands for just single samples…The cost of food and living just adds to the financial burden.”

Students also spoke about how there have been technical mishaps in communicating the details for the Sarthi fellowship program. “Sarthi had put up an advertisement initially giving details about how the fellowship recruitments would take place—aspirants would be interviewed, in terms of which they would be provided with the fellowships. Much later, you had some of the students being met with news about how there would also be a CET exam that they are required to give, which was not mentioned earlier,” explained Rushikesh Labde, a Saarthi fellowship aspirant from Pune University. His PhD research deals with the formulation of organic shoe polish, which comes under the Botany discipline.

“My family comes from a farming background, they are of the view that at this age, one should be earning money through a job and setting up a house. All we are doing right now is research. We have to pay the college fees, the expensive chemical equipment, living costs, food- we need the fellowship money, we need the scholarship” he notes.