Case study from Kerala – National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights

Case Study from Kerala

There are several challenges faced by SC and ST students in their access to higher education. In terms of accessing scholarship, students experience discrimination at several levels. Starting from the application, many applications from the SC/ST students are not accepted and are denied admission stating reasons of insufficient documents. Moreover often the process of filing application is often so lengthy and tiring, that many students lack the resources in doing so and there are no mechanisms to address to smoothen out these issues. Adding to it, there have been certain policy level changes in terms of reduction in allocation, number of scholarship, linking scholarship to aadhar making the Dalit and Adivasi students more vulnerable in terms of the position in the educational institutions.

Sl No	District	Number of SC students scholarships withheld			Total	Number of ST students scholarships withheld			Total
Sl No	District	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	Total	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	Total
1	Thiruvananthapuram	216	1277	727	2220	14	68	15	97
2	Kollam	431	1479	691	2601	14	27	15	56
3	Pathanamthitta	375	397	230	1002	14	18	5	37
4	Alappuzha	102	391	241	734	4	10	2	16
5	Kottayam	255	528	294	1077	39	54	27	120
6	Idukki	69	216	181	466	36	59	18	113
7	Ernakulam	267	869	508	1644	15	69	35	119
8	Thrissur	247	1126	772	2145	4	12	4	20
9	Palakkad	93	929	569	1591	8	84	38	130
10	Malappuram	285	1738	813	2836	9	35	19	63
11	Kozhikode	214	696	256	1166	6	34	18	58
12	Wayanad	75	92	30	197	141	136	35	312
13	Kannur	134	280	146	560	14	53	22	89
14	Kasargod	67	205	159	431	14	120	114	248
	State Total	2830	10223	5617	18670	332	779	367	1478

Even after Supreme Court’s judgement, that Aadhar should not be made mandatory for availing government welfare schemes, Government of Kerala, in circular dated 19/12/2012 made it mandatory. Since then department withheld applications of the students who didn’t provide aadhar linked account details. The list of these students who couldn’t avail the scholarship due to non-compliance with Adhar was published in the website with district wise details.

In Kerala due to this issue of linking Aadhar number with the scholarship distribution around 20000 Dalit and Adivasi students had been denied scholarships for more than two years. After obtaining this information the state team met the Minister and Secretary SC department and Directors SC and ST department for his immediate intervention. The team also filed number of RTI application to verify the information, further also issued a press note stating gross violations. All major newspapers and online portals carried this news in detail. Later the Director SC department informed that pendency of scholarships due to Aadhar has been brought down to less than 1000 students. Therefore this campaign has benefited at least 19,000 Dalit and Adivasi students in the state of Kerala.