Rubia Khanam from Hindupur in Anantapur district managed to complete the second year of her undergraduate medicine course at the Davao Medical College in Philippines, but she is unsure whether she would be able to complete the remaining tenure of three and a half years as she is yet to be paid a scholarship instituted by the government.
Ms. Khanam’s parents, who run a small cloth shop in Hindupur, sent her to the Philippines for a medical degree under the Ambedkar Overseas Vidya Nidhi that extends financial assistance in the form of scholarships to students belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Classes and other minority communities to pursue higher studies abroad.
Ms. Khanam’s mother Maqbool Jaan, along with many other parents of students who went to universities abroad after being enrolled under the government scheme, are now at their wits’ end after allegedly being deprived of the financial assistance. They are now on a relay hunger strike at the Guntur Collector’s office, demanding justice. Their protest entered the 19th day on Wednesday.
“We applied for the scheme and sent our children to different universities abroad but no funds have been released by the government so far. All of us are either from the middle or lower middle class and have incurred huge debts to pay our children’s fees,” Ms. Jaan said.
She says her daughter, along with 30 other girls from the State, was made to vacate her hostel for failing to pay the fee. “For 29 days, they lived in a cellar that did not even have washrooms. Their seniors allowed them to use their restrooms,” she said.
At one point, a desperate Maqbool Jaan wanted to sell one of her kidneys to meet the college expenses of her daughter. “Of the total fee of ₹31 lakhs, I managed to pay ₹11 lakh but have no clue on how to raise the remaining money,“ she said.
Nangalam Jyothi is fighting for her daughter Divyasri, who is pursuing MBBS at Kazakh National Medical University in Kazakhstan. “I am a cancer patient and my husband suffered a paralytic attack. I do tailoring for a living. We borrowed money to fulfil our daughter’s dreams thinking that the loans can be repaid with the money the government would pay us,” she said. Divyasri was detained in the exam for failing to pay the fee. “Now, they are asking her to pay an extra ₹20,000 in order to write the exam again. How do we arrange so much money?” Ms. Jyothi said, fighting back tears.
Tangidi Ramesh’s two daughters are in the same boat, facing humiliation and rejection in a foreign land and none to fall back on.
Narrating their tales of woes in the absence of any help from the government, the parents have been running from pillar to post in vain for last few years. They timed their protest with the ongoing Assembly session in the hope that their problem would be taken up for discussion on the floor of the House.
Sources, meanwhile, said that a discussion is on and the government is contemplating bringing in a more comprehensive scheme. A Vigilance enquiry is in progress to weed out bogus beneficiaries. “The genuine beneficiaries will be paid scholarships but it may take some time,” said the source.
