‘Include linguistic minorities under government scholarship schemes’

Leaders of the Konkani community are planning to start a process to approach the government and possibly file a public interest litigation petition in the Supreme Court to bring linguistic minority communities under government scholarship schemes, T.V. Mohandas Pai, chairman, Manipal Global Education, has said.

He was here on Wednesday to attend the Vishwa Konkani Student Scholarship Fund programme.

Addressing a gathering, Mr. Pai said linguistic minorities such as the Konkani community were being deprived of “their rights” as only religious minorities were being considered by National Minority Development Corporation. “Though the Constitution says minorities can be religious as well as linguistic, the government gives scholarships only on religion basis due to political reasons,” he said.

Later at a press conference, he responded to a query whether the suggestion was practical considering only 22 out of more than 1,600 languages were officially recognised in the country under the VIII Schedule. “We will work on this and consult many people. Within six months we will take a decision,” said Mr. Pai.

Ivan D’Souza, MLC, who distributed the scholarships, promised to raise the issue at the next session of the Legislative Council.

During the ceremony, Mr. Pai conceded that although the Konkani community was “politically” small, they should strive to be an economically, educationally and entrepreneurially dominating community globally.

Urging the fund to set up an angel investment group and incubation centre to encourage entrepreneurs, he said, “Technology entrepreneurship is rewarding…even if one per cent of the companies go global, we should aim to have 100 dollar billionaires in the community by 2030.” Scholarships worth Rs. 3 crore were distributed to 579 engineering, 36 MBBS students and four students were given Rs. 1 lakh each for their overseas studies.

Since its establishment in 2010, VKSSF has given over Rs. 8.5 crore as scholarships to around 4,500 students, and organised more than 7,200 hours of skill and personality development training for members of the backward Konkani community, said Ramdas Kamath U., chairman of the fund.

At a press meet, Mr. Kamath said they were looking to expand their donor base to ensure 100 per cent funding for professional courses, instead of the current partial funding.