The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) is looking to tweak the criteria for grant of Prime Minister’s fellowships to research students of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology and the National Institutes of Technology.
The fellowships – which are meant to promote research and innovation – will give the students about ₹75,000 a month.
The MHRD is considering a change in the criteria, among others, of who can apply.
“While the earlier plan was to let anyone scoring a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 8 or above in B.Tech apply for the scholarship, now the plan is to allow those students of these institutions who scored in the top 20 percentile to apply for it,” said an official who did not wish to be named.
The reason: institutions have different criteria for awarding grades and a better way to assess students is to see how they fared among their peers.
However, the proposals will go through the Cabinet before the scheme is finalised.
Earlier, the plan was to invite students to submit their proposals to a portal that would send these to a national coordination institution. Now, there may be a move to make students apply to the particular institution that will be assigned the task of assessing proposals in that particular subject.
Fillip to innovation
The fellowships are aimed at giving a fillip to research and innovation, an area in which Indian institutions are seen to be lagging behind their counterparts in other parts of the world.
The proposals, it is hoped, will give bright students who want to move to corporate jobs for money the incentive to stay on in research.
