A government scholarship took them abroad. But then left them in a lurch

For a few weeks after Aditi Kumar arrived in New York City to pursue her masters, she could not afford a mattress. She had carried a few coats with her, which she owned because her family belonged to a cold, mountainous region in India. She piled these one on top of another, threw a bedsheet over them and went to sleep.

Soon, however, she started to suffer from backaches. Kumar realised she could not put off the purchase any longer and bought a mattress. But she could not afford a blanket and was worried about how she would manage in the cold – she was relieved when a friend lent her an old blanket.

This was just one of the many struggles that Kumar faced after she travelled to the United States to begin a master’s programme. (She, like all the students Scroll spoke to for this story, asked to be identified by a pseudonym.) These struggles were particularly bitter because a year earlier, Kumar had been awarded the National Overseas Scholarship, administered by the Indian government’s ministry of social justice and empowerment. The scholarship “aims to empower low-income students from marginalised communities, including the Scheduled Castes, denotified nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, landless agricultural labourers and traditional artisans”.

In 2023, the ministry offered 125 awards. Out of these, 115 were for students from Scheduled Castes, six for students from denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes and four for students who were children of landless agricultural labourers and traditional artisans.

Kumar was thrilled when she was informed that she had been selected – her parents work in the social sector, and would not have been able to pay for her tuition and living expenses abroad.

But her excitement was short-lived.

She spent the weeks following her selection running between officials of the ministry and local government bodies, trying to gather all the documents that they asked for. As a result, she was unable to prepare properly for her transition abroad. “The chaos did not allow any time for research on my end about the funds that were needed,” she said.

She wishes that the government had offered some help in this regard. “I didn’t realise that it was this expensive – I felt that the ministry or embassy who have been giving this scholarship out for years would be aware of the financials the students require to survive in the city,” she said.

It was only when she reached the United States that she found out that the scholarship would not even cover her basic needs in the country, and that its disbursal would be irregular and unpredictable. Often, she would not even have enough money for a cup of coffee when she was trying to fend off sleep and study or attend a late class.

She began finding numerous ways to save money, such as avoiding buying a mattress at first. Sometimes, she skipped meals. She shopped for groceries only once a month – even bread, which cost four dollars, was too expensive for her. If she fell sick with a cough or fever, she would sometimes wait for it to pass rather than spend money on medicines.

Even now, ten months in, financial troubles bog her down, and she worries about money every day. When she tries to contact the ministry to ask about her funds, her emails and phone calls go unanswered. She described the experience as “disappointing, painful and hurtful”. She added, “It is a scheme that tortures students.”

Having to constantly stress about finances is taking a toll on both her mental health and her academics. “Because it is something I constantly worry about, I’m unable to put my 100% into my studies,” she said. “You need financial stability to be mentally sane.”

Many students from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes who receive these scholarships face the same problems. “Many global scholarships increase their stipends yearly to match inflation. However, our state and central governments are providing insufficient stipends,” said Raju Kendre, the founder of Eklavya India Foundation, an organisation that is working towards increasing access to “quality higher education among first-generation students from marginalised communities”.

In an email, he noted, “Scholarships such as Felix, Chevening, Commonwealth (offered in the United Kingdom) pay approximately 19,000 pounds for living costs which are revised for inflation every year, but the National Overseas Scholarship for SC/ST students provides less than 10,000 pounds.”

Because of the problems with the scholarship scheme, “Students struggle to survive and often have to do part-time jobs to cover costs,” Kendre observed.

This can sometimes negate the very reasons they seek out international programmes, such as to break free from systemic oppression in India. “They find themselves struggling to meet basic daily needs,” he said. “They are forced to cut back on food, networking etc just to make ends meet.”

Kendre noted that many other smaller countries offer much stronger support to their students to study abroad. “Even countries like Indonesia invest so much in their students,” he said.

Kumar agreed. “A very close friend of mine is a student from Indonesia, and she is on a similar scholarship as me,” she said. “The country covers everything. She is able to chill and commit fully to her course without being bothered by financial issues.”

Kendre argued that the Union government should create a minimum of 1,000 scholarships for each of the categories of students that are eligible for them. “Many small nations across the world are supporting thousands of scholarships per year,” he said.

Scroll emailed the ministry of social justice and empowerment to seek responses about the criticisms of the scholarship programme, as well as about the conduct of staff at the ministry office. This story will be updated if the ministry responds.

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Akash K realised that his scholarship funds were insufficient for his studies as soon as he landed in a city in Western Europe a little over five years ago to begin his PhD programme.

He was to receive 1,000 euros as a stipend every month from the National Overseas Scholarship. At immigration, officials looked over his scholarship details and asked him how he was going to manage with those funds. “You need at least 1,300 euros to survive,” he recounted them saying.

Fortunately, Akash had managed to borrow money from friends and acquaintances, and showed the officials that he had some extra funds for his expenses. “I was at least able to borrow. I don’t know what other students who couldn’t borrow money would have done,” said Akash, who first spoke to Scroll three years ago, for a story about how not enough students were receiving the scholarship.

Akash had not yet started receiving funds from his scholarship when he travelled for his programme, so he had to use the borrowed money to even pay for his transport from the airport to his place of accommodation.

The conditions that the ministry had set for him to start receiving his scholarship proved immensely frustrating. “The ministry said that they will only start to transfer the money after I opened an account in a bank here,” he said. But in order to open an account, the bank asked him to furnish proof of address, such as a rental agreement. And to rent a house, he needed his scholarship money to pay for the deposit, the first month’s rent and other living expenses. “What was I supposed to do?” he said. “The first month was absolute torture.”

Akash was only able to manage because a member of the embassy lent him some money. “He was from an OBC background and said he understood my plight,” he said. With that and the other money that he had saved, Akash managed to procure temporary accommodation and set up a bank account. “I had terrible housing and barely got by,” he said.

He noted that many countries gave students their scholarship stipends in advance. “I don’t know why India also didn’t do that,” he said. He added that students from marginalised backgrounds often don’t even have the money to buy clothing before they arrive in a new country.

After he began receiving his stipend, too, he struggled to manage his expenses. Noting that even dormitories cost at least 550 euros a month, he said, “The stipend of 1,000 euros doesn’t suffice at all.”

He also faced problems with disbursal – for the first year or so, Akash frequented the embassy because there were delays in stipend. He said sometimes officials made things unnecessarily difficult. For instance, he was required to regularly send in progress reports of his course “I had to show proof that I was doing well and fulfilling the conditions of the scholarship,” he said. But after some months, officials told him that the rector of the university would have to directly send in the report. “But that’s not even how it works in India,” he said. “Even there, only the student has to send, not a university official.”

Both Akash and Kumar also faced problems with their contingency funds – this refers to money that is not part of a student’s fixed stipend, but from which they can request funds for specific purchases such as laptops and books, and expenses such as for study tours and conferences. For one, they said, the students do not get the fund directly into their accounts. They have to make the purchase, send in the bills and get reimbursed, which places a financial burden on them.

Further, when Akash requested for contingency funds to buy a camera because he was required to have one for his fieldwork, his request was denied because, officials claimed, it was a “luxury item”. Another time, he sought funds to purchase an iPad, but this request too was denied. “They said I had purchased a laptop, so they would not allow me to buy anything else,” he said.

Kumar, too, needed money from her contingency fund to buy a laptop. However, one of the conditions laid down for the use of these funds was that if students purchased a laptop, they would have to return the device after they completed their course. “I chose not to go ahead with the laptop because I saw no point in using and then returning it,” she said. “So I chose to buy books that I can at least keep with me.”

Akash said, “They cannot gatekeep this money and tell us what we can and can’t buy.”

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Both Akash and Kumar said that because they faced a shortage of funds, they denied themselves experiences that are usually a part of studying abroad.

When Kumar arrived in New York City, for instance, like so many other tourists and foreign students, she was looking forward to seeing the Statue of Liberty. But when she calculated how much the ferry rides would cost, she changed her mind.

She was eventually able to visit it when her university organised the tour for free. “Besides that, I haven’t been anywhere. I simply cannot afford it,” she said. “My scholarship money won’t cover it.”

Akash explained that for a long time, he too denied himself experiences he had been looking forward to. “There are so many museums in Europe. I was not able to visit any,” he said. “There is a science history museum that I was very eager to visit.” It was only after about a year after he moved that he was able to save enough money to visit some museums.

Akash explained that having money for these experiences was important. “Life is very individualistic in Europe,” he said. “One needs to have money to experience a social life. And without a social life, mental health often gets disturbed.”

Further, he noted, when students find themselves facing such mental health troubles, they need money to seek help, such as from counsellors and psychologists. “Our student insurance covers only a limited number of sessions, and if we need to visit psychologists beyond that, it costs 200 euros per hour,” he said.

He added, “When we spend every hour, every minute thinking about money, how would that not take a toll on our mental health.”

Nandita S, a student pursuing a master’s degree in the United Kingdom, recounted that about six months after she started her course, she avoided accompanying her peers on a trip that the university arranged to the city of Oxford because it cost 50 pounds. “I chose not to go,” she said.

Nandita lives a 30-minute bus ride away from her university. If she had had enough funds, she would have preferred to stay in the university accommodations, which would have allowed more time to socialise with her classmates and form networks. But this would have cost her 10,000 pounds for a year and the scholarship only provides her with 9,900 pounds, with which she also has to manage her living expenses.

“Living in the university is expensive, so I am forced to live far away because it is cheaper,” she said. Because her scholarship is not enough to cover all her expenses, such as the cost of the bus ticket from her house to the university, she takes up part-time jobs from time to time, even though hers is an intensive, one-year programme.

Nandita also avoids leisure activities such as eating out because of the expense, and thus misses out on opportunities to socialise. “The cost of one meal will be as much as the amount I spend on a grocery run,” she said.

Students from privileged backgrounds have vastly different experiences, Akash noted. “They already have bank accounts and enough social capital to navigate these spaces,” he said. This allows them to thrive in an environment that can often be hostile, and which leaves students from marginalised backgrounds confused and anxious. “There is high inflation, anti-immigrant sentiment and we are not given any proper orientation or support from the government,” he said.

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The students explained that apart from problems with the funds, the administrative processes they had to go through were also immensely cumbersome. “The bureaucratic system is just awful,” Kumar said. She noted that its lack of efficiency is apparent from the fact that even the website of the ministry of social justice and empowerment often doesn’t work. “The website constantly crashes,” Kumar said. “It is like everything is against you.”

In processing her scholarship, the first problem she faced was that the ministry demanded that she submit an unconditional offer letter to them. But, she noted, universities often first issue a conditional offer letter and issue an unconditional one only later in the admission process. To comply with the government’s conditions, she had to plead with her university to send her an unconditional offer letter before time.

She also had to submit numerous other documents to the government, including a gross income certificate, and bank statements. Further, she had to pay Rs 100,000 to execute two bonds of Rs 50,000 each, which were to serve as a kind of guarantee to the government for the scholarship money it was providing to her.

She also had to get numerous documents signed by local government officials in her hometown, which proved to be a major challenge – many refused to sign simply because they were unaware of the scholarship. She was forced to go from one office to another, trying to obtain the signatures.

“People should have been celebrating the fact that I may have been the first from my state to ever go on this scholarship,” she said. “Instead they gave me hell.” She recounted that the email the ministry sent to inform her of her selection for the scholarship “did not even have the word ‘congratulations’”.

As the start of her programme drew nearer, the university asked Kumar to send them a “final award letter”, with details of the funding she was receiving, so that they could issue her a letter that she needed for her visa application.

She recounted this was one of the most daunting parts of the process because officials simply did not cooperate. “I had to ask friends of friends to find contacts in the ministry to hasten the process,” she said. Eventually, though, even this worked against her – during one visit to the ministry, she said, officials commented that there was a “delay because they had to respond to so many calls and letters regarding her scholarship”. She added, “If they had just done their jobs, I would not have had to reach out to so many people.”

Kumar recalled being treated with disdain by officials at the ministry. “There were upper caste women sitting there who would not even acknowledge me,” she said. “They were so cold to me, made me feel as if they were funding my studies from their own pockets. It was an extremely intimidating space.” She added, “Their gaze, body language and language are all casteist.”

Kumar acknowledged that she was able to set things in motion because she had access to networks of people who could help her. “I had that privilege, I don’t know what other students who did not have this privilege would have been able to do,” she said.

Due to the delay in the process, the costs of air tickets increased as did other expenses, like rent. “When you are looking for places to rent at the last minute, all the cheaper places are already gone,” she said.

By the time the bureaucratic processes were complete, prices had risen so much that she had to borrow money for her ticket, which amounted to around Rs 2 lakh, and also for the deposit and rent for her house, which amounted to around Rs 1 lakh.

Akash faced similar hurdles in dealing with the government. “I would call them repeatedly and 99% of the time, nobody would pick up,” he said. “Nobody cares. Even the ministry, which is located in Shastri Bhawan, is completely inaccessible to common people.” When he visited the ministry, he too felt that officials behaved arrogantly.

Eventually, the disbursal of his scholarship was delayed for nearly five months, forcing him to delay his departure. “I joined the university four months late because of bureaucratic delays,” he said. “They always made me feel like they are the ones with the power and so I’m at their mercy because I had no power.”

Kumar is currently in the midst of another struggle with communicating with the ministry. When she tried to register for classes for her next semester, she was informed that it would cost her a certain amount above what she had already paid earlier, through her scholarship funds.

She has been attempting to contact the ministry, but the ministry in Delhi is “not even responding to the embassy office,“ she said. “The embassy has told me that the ministry should be sending in more funds. But they are telling me that they have repeatedly tried to reach out to the ministry but they are completely unresponsive.”

Kumar argued that there was no justification for the ministry to place such hurdles in the way of students on scholarships. “Universities offer financial statements involving tuition, living expenses,” she said. “I don’t know why the ministry can’t just accept this document and give students the appropriate funds.”

Another bureaucratic problem that the students in the United States face is that those who are awarded the scholarship must procure a J-1 visa – this is an “exchange visitor” visa, rather than a student visa, which requires students to return to India for a minimum of two years after their course is complete.

Further, the scholarship itself mandates that all recipients return to India within 30 days of completing their course and spend at least one year “trying to look for opportunities to serve in various departments or ministries of the government”.

Many see this as an unfair condition. “The first year after we graduate is most crucial because that is when we get job offers,” Kumar said. “If they force us to come back as soon as we finish we have to give up on so many career prospects.”

Mahesh D, a postgraduate student in the United Kingdom, explained that because of this condition, he will likely lose out on a dream job that he has been offered while still a student. The company is even prepared to sponsor his visa, but because of the terms of his scholarship, he will have to turn down the offer. “I will lose the social mobility that I have gained during my time here as a student,” he said.

He added, “It is not like as soon as we go back, we have a government job waiting for us. My dream to uplift my family from the dire circumstances they are in right now is out of reach again.” He rued the fact that he was being forced to “go back to living in the same conditions”.

Kumar noted that her peers did not have the same worries. “I can see how much privilege they come from,” Kumar said. “All they have to do is study. But how can one concentrate on studies when you are always stressed about money?”