Despite efforts of many individuals and NGOs….this year in Lucknow itself we fall short by almost 50% of the 32,000 forms target. There are numerous reasons for this; but by far the biggest reason was during this year, the schools hardly cooperated in this whole exercise. The reason: From this year onward, all the scholarship amount received by the school from Central Government, would not be given in cash to the students – rather they have to issue a cheque. Since most of the schools practiced in reimbursing less than 50% of the sanctioned scholarship amount to the students, and getting it signed on the whole amount. This non-cooperation resulted in only filling of approx. 18,000 prematric forms in Lucknow….which is well below the estimated target of the DMO Office of 32,000 forms. This story is repeated everywhere in the state. The same non-cooperation continued for Post Matric application forms also….but since major component of Post Matric forms were filled Online – hence the role of school was restricted to only verifying the facts of the student and forwarding the same to the DMO office (which was also done half heartily, as the scholarship amount in this case was directly credited to the student’s bank account).
Thus the students are stuck in this catch 22 situation….we have a Government who is ready to dole out funds to the needy and deserving student – who matches their criteria; but on the other hand…we have schools who are not willing to take extra burden on them in filling the prematric forms. Our foundation has helped and filled thousands of scholarship application forms online….but that’s a drop in the ocean. This year, only 8 schools cooperated with us in filling the forms for prematric students – while rest of the schools asked the students to get the forms filled at our office. As we know now, what to be expected and what opportunity we missed out in helping these kids out; next year, we begin our exercise from the month of May 2013 onwards with 6 centers in Lucknow. We cannot ask the Government to take this onus on itself….we will have to form pressure forming groups to convince all the minority run schools and colleges to also share this responsibility equally – as they are major partners to this issue.
It is our collective responsibility…..Government has come half-way to help…lets cover the other half and shake hands.