Students from marginalized areas in Maharashtra have turned to opposing the government’s plan to drastically cut the number of scholarships awarded to these researchers.
OBC (other backward classes) students have been on a 29-day chain hunger strike in Azad Maidan, calling for an increase in the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Research Fellowship (MJPRF), which Mahajyoti Sansthan offers to OBC and nomadic community PhD students.
In the meantime, protests are being organised in Pune and Kolhapur by students from different communities. The government has chosen to restrict the fellowship to 200 students this year, leaving 1,450 candidates without funding, even though the state awarded fellowships to 957 OBC students in 2021 and 1,226 research students in 2022.
‘There are 412 castes in the OBC category. Many of these students are the first in their families to complete higher education. The proportion of OBCs in higher education is minimal, and in the field of research, it is negligible. Many OBC leaders are protesting against the lack of reservation for Marathas, but none of them has come to help us,’ said Saddam Mujawar, a PhD student told India Today TV.
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