Not everyone is happy with hike in research fellowships

The much-awaited hike in fellowships for research scholars was announced on Tuesday by Union Minister of State for Science & Technology Jitendra Singh. With this, scholarships get an across the board increase of at least 50 per cent, effective from October 1, 2014.

However, some of the over 20,000 students, who campaigned for it here, have received the news with scepticism. Souvik Mandal, a Ph.D student at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc., believes that the Union government should commit to an annual increase in the scholarship to keep up with inflation, and also give researchers medical cover (as opposed to medical allowance researchers get from respective institutes).

“We also demand a yearly leave travel allowance to visit home. Basically, research has to be made an attractive career option for future generations,” he said.

The country has around one lakh research scholars currently pursuing Master’s, Ph.D.s and post-doctoral degrees.

Pankaj Jain, secretary, Academic Affairs, Students’ Council, IISc., said this was the “first step” by the government. “I would have preferred if the government gave us a retrospective hike from April rather than October as we had demanded,” he added.

According to the revised figures, the Junior Research Fellowship is up from Rs. 16,000 to Rs. 25,000 per month; Senior Research Fellowship from Rs. 18,000 to Rs. 28,000; Research Associate-I from Rs. 22,000 to Rs. 36,000; Research Associate-II Rs. 23,000 to Rs. 38,000 and Research Associate-III is up from Rs. 24,000 to Rs. 40,000.

For several months now, research scholars have demanded a hike in stipend, contending that the present fellowship amounts were not adequate to support student life amid rising prices. Stipends have also been irregular and do not keep up with fee hikes, students had said.

The Minister has directed the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to put in place a mechanism for the regular evaluation of fellowships and suggest periodic changes, a DST press release says. The department has also been asked to put in place a Web-based fellowship assessment and disbursement mechanism to avoid delays in stipend disbursement.