Reform Without Reach

Maharashtra’s new policy promises to streamline its educational welfare institutions but leaves deeper structural flaws untouched.

For years, Maharashtra’s alphabet soup of educational welfare institutions - SARTHI, BARTI, Mahajyoti, TRTI and AMRUT - has invited the same complaints. Students have grappled with differing eligibility rules, opaque procedures and uneven implementation. A unified policy governing these bodies, announced by the state government on July 1st, ought therefore to have been an occasion for celebration. Uniformity, transparency and predictability are virtues in public administration. Yet the new circular risks achieving uniformity by standardising limits rather than expanding opportunity.

The decision to allow candidates preparing for the Maharashtra Public Service Commission (MPSC) and the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examinations to avail themselves of coaching benefits twice, instead of only once, is sensible. So too is the recognition that Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes may require distinct financial provisions and implementation guidelines. But these improvements are overshadowed by a larger problem. The reforms appear to be administrative rather than transformative.

Inadequate Reforms

Nothing illustrates this better than the decision to cap research fellowships at just 100 for each institution. In a state that boasts some of India’s largest universities and produces thousands of postgraduate and doctoral students every year, such a ceiling appears detached from reality. Research is not an expenditure to be rationed like a scarce commodity. It is an investment in knowledge, innovation and future productivity.

The same logic applies to competitive-examination coaching. Providing coaching to 1,000 MPSC aspirants and 400 UPSC candidates sounds generous until one remembers the scale of the demand. Every year, lakhs of young Maharashtrians compete for a tiny number of government jobs. Against that backdrop, these figures resemble pilot projects rather than statewide interventions. The state’s ambition seems oddly modest compared with the aspirations of its students.

More troubling is what the circular does not address. The costs of higher education have risen sharply. Inflation has eroded the value of stipends. Overseas education has become more expensive even as international exposure becomes increasingly valuable. Yet the policy makes no meaningful expansion in foreign scholarship schemes, subsistence allowances or other financial support programmes that could genuinely broaden access.

This reflects a deeper misunderstanding of what these institutions were meant to become. Bodies such as SARTHI, BARTI and Mahajyoti were never intended to function merely as scholarship-disbursing offices. Their names themselves emphasise research, training and capacity-building. Yet, over time, many have become administrative clearing houses that outsource training programmes to external agencies while developing little expertise of their own. They have failed to build permanent academic ecosystems capable of nurturing talent over the long term.

Governance Deficit

The consequences are visible. Maharashtra still lacks robust policy research centres linked to these institutions. Employment-oriented curricula remain underdeveloped. Partnerships with industry are sporadic. Dedicated study centres capable of preparing students for advanced research or public-service careers remain the exception rather than the rule. Institutions designed to produce intellectual capital have gradually been reduced to processing applications and releasing funds.

Nor does the circular address the governance deficit that has long plagued these bodies. Independent operational guidelines remain absent. Budgetary allocations have not risen commensurately with expanding demand. Social audits, which could improve transparency, remain missing. Students continue to lack an independent grievance-redress mechanism. Advisory systems incorporating student representation have yet to emerge. Regulatory boards often meet irregularly, while key decisions remain concentrated within the ministry, diminishing the autonomy that these supposedly independent institutions were created to enjoy.

Centralisation may simplify administration, but it rarely encourages innovation. Institutions deprived of autonomy inevitably become cautious, procedural and slow to respond to changing educational needs.

The broader question is what Maharashtra expects from these bodies. If they are expected to prepare disadvantaged students to compete in an increasingly global economy, the policy falls well short.

Today’s students seek more than financial assistance. They require advanced skills, research opportunities, international exposure, professional networks and institutions capable of adapting to rapidly changing labour markets. The state’s challenge is no longer merely to widen access to education. It is to improve its quality and relevance.

Unless Maharashtra expands funding, strengthens governance and allows these institutions to evolve into genuine centres of research and training, the latest reforms will only have standardised scarcity. For a generation that sees education as the surest path to social mobility, that would be a particularly costly form of efficiency.

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