A Distant Dream

A flagship foreign scholarship for Maratha students is tangled in red tape, outdated rules, and bureaucratic apathy.

When it was launched with much fanfare two years ago, the Maharaja Sayajirao Gaikwad Foreign Scholarship for Meritorious Students held out the promise of transformative change. Administered by SARTHI - the Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj Research, Training and Human Development Institute - it was meant to help 75 bright students from the Maratha and Kunbi communities study abroad each year. But two years on, the scheme has become a case study in how not to run a scholarship programme.

Instead of removing barriers to higher education, SARTHI has constructed a labyrinth of restrictive conditions, outdated guidelines, and administrative opacity. The result? Eligible students are left disillusioned, uncertain and often stranded just as their academic journeys are about to begin.

At the heart of the issue lies a failure of planning. The scheme has no fixed calendar and no clarity on when applications will be invited, no predictable timeline for interviews or announcements, and no transparency in the selection process. In 2024, for instance, the second and final list of selected students was published as late as April this year, by which point many foreign universities had already closed admissions or required fee payments. Even more galling, the scholarship money had not yet reached the students’ accounts, leaving them unable to accept offers for want of funds.

This chaotic state of affairs persists despite the state government’s announcement in July last year of a unified foreign scholarship policy meant to harmonise and streamline various schemes. The new policy did away with some regressive rules like the minimum requirement of 75 percent marks in graduation and expanded support to cover the full cost of education, while promising uniformity in timelines and transparency. But SARTHI has either not read the fine print, or has chosen to ignore it entirely.

Take, for instance, its insistence on applying the now-defunct 75 percent eligibility criterion. Or its arbitrary imposition of financial caps – Rs. 30 lakh for postgraduate and Rs. 40 lakh for doctoral students - even though the government’s circular makes it clear that all educational expenses are to be borne by the state.

Even the application process has turned into an obstacle course. This year, aspirants were asked to submit a Rs. 500 affidavit on stamp paper at the time of application, a requirement typically reserved for those who have already been selected. For cash-strapped students, many of whom are the first in their families to consider studying abroad, this is not a mere bureaucratic formality but a financial and psychological burden.

The rot runs deeper. Over the past two years, the number of applicants has dwindled - a clear sign of eroding trust. The scheme receives little publicity, few outreach campaigns are organised, and there is a glaring absence of coaching, mentoring, or counselling support. The dream of foreign education is not merely about financial assistance but requires hand-holding through visa processes, documentation and cultural preparedness. SARTHI, alas, seems blind to this.

All this would be troubling enough if the leadership were known to be inept. But SARTHI’s officials have, in the past, been praised for their integrity, intellectual calibre and administrative competence. Their failure to align with the government’s broader policy goals, then, is all the more inexplicable. Why would an institute, established to uplift a historically disadvantaged community, allow itself to become an agent of discouragement?

There is no shortage of remedies. SARTHI must adopt the unified scholarship policy in both letter and spirit. It must fix an annual calendar for advertisements, applications, and disbursement. Colleges and universities across Maharashtra must be roped in to publicise the scheme. The Rs. 500 affidavit rule must be scrapped without delay. And most importantly, the financial caps must go. A student’s future should not depend on arbitrary ceilings.

The irony of the scheme’s name is hard to ignore. Maharaja Sayajirao Gaikwad was a pioneering reformer and a patron of education, who famously supported B.R. Ambedkar’s studies abroad. Today, his name adorns a scholarship that risks denying his ideological heirs the very opportunity he once championed.

Done right, SARTHI’s foreign scholarship could be a lifeline. Done wrong, it becomes just another door closed to those standing on the margins.

(The writer is a lawyer and president, Student Helping Hands. Views personal.)