Advocacy

Higher education has become expensive and is getting beyond the reach of medium income groups of Muslims. Students look for resources to complete their courses and find few avenues of help. Forget about prestigious courses such as Medicine, Engineering or Architecture. Even the undergraduate courses like Bachelor in Business Administration (BBA), Bachelor in Information Technology (BSc IT), and Bachelor in Mass Media etc are beyond the reach of the poor Muslim students.
The community has established a slew of education and welfare Trust to provide financial assistance to poor students. But a cursory survey confirms that most of these Trusts are unable to cope up with the large number of applicants for financial assistance. Majority of applicants are turned away and have nowhere to go. Perhaps there is an alternative.
There are many government schemes in general and for minorities in particular for funding education, business and employment. But unfortunately only a minuscule section of the community is aware of such schemes and still fewer take advantage of it.
It so happens that government announces the welfare schemes for minorities, but because of lack of awareness, many of these schemes lapse or remain unutilized. How many education Trust, parents or students are aware about, like the Prime Minister’s New 15-point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities which was announced in June, 2006? It provides a post-matric scholarship scheme for meritorious students from minority communities. Under the scheme, 10 + 2 students will get Rs. 7,000 per year. Students pursuing under graduate and post graduate courses will get Rs. 4, 260 and Rs. 6,120 for an academic year.
The objective of the scheme is to award scholarships to meritorious students belonging to economically weaker sections of minority community so as to provide them better opportunities for higher education, increase their rate of attainment in higher education and enhance their employability.
Under this scheme, each state would be given a specific quota and 6,900 such scholarships were sanctioned for Maharashtra alone. However, three months after the scheme was launched, the awareness level is practically nil. Even the management and principals of Muslim educational institutions are not aware of these schemes.
Though the amount is very less in comparison to the fees but at least it will lessen the burden of poor students who wants to pursue higher education. But for unknown reasons, the community is not making use of these schemes. Lack of publicity and lack of awareness among Muslim parents and students are the major issue.
There are other schemes such as pre-matric scholarship scheme for minority students of class I to X on the part of both the governments of state/union territories. Students having scored not less than 50 per cent marks in the last class examination and whose parents annual gross income counts below Rs. 1 lakh are eligible for this scholarship.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has also announced a doubling of the allocation for the Union Ministry of Minority Affairs. The allocation for the Ministry would go up from Rs.500 crore to Rs.1,000 crore. The schemes that the government plans to fund with this enhanced allocation include a multi-sectoral development plan for each of the 90 minority concentration districts. While the plan totals Rs. 3,780 crore, the allocation for the next fiscal has been set at Rs.540 crore.
Apart from the pre-matric scholarship with an allocation of Rs. 80 crore, there is a scheme for modernising ‘madrassa’ education for which Rs. 45.45 crore has been set aside.
Chidambaram also has plans to provide Rs. 60 crore to enhance the corpus fund of the Maulana Azad Education Foundation (MAEF) a voluntary organisation established to promote education among educationally backward minorities.
Now the question is, ‘Will this money reach deserving Muslims? Or will it remain on paper. The only remedy is initiating small advocacy groups at the local level whose only objective should be to extract information about various government schemes for the community and make this information available to all.

In an effort to inculcate scientific temper among the modern day Muslims, the Aligarh Muslim University has decided to revive the Scientific Society established by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in 1864. The AMU will re-define the Society’s objectives and goals keeping in mind contemporary challenges and a desire to induce scientific thought in all fields of knowledge.
The Scientific Society had served as the focal point of the Aligarh Movement. The Scientific Society was the main plank of Sir Syed’s educational movement and rendered remarkable service in liberating the mind of the people from conservatism and inertia. It sought to broaden the horizon of the people of that era by inculcating a thirst for modern knowledge especially among the Indian Muslims.
The decision to revive the Scientific Society was taken at a consultative meeting with Deans of all the faculties under the Chairmanship of AMU Vice Chancellor, Prof. P. K. Abdul Azis.
Prof. Azis said that a Committee would shortly be formed for drafting the rules and regulations of the above body. Journals published by various departments will be brought under this Society.

Till about five years ago, he was just another Amdavadi boy hanging out with friends and sipping endless cups of tea in the walled city area of Jamalpur. Today, 27-year old Taslimarif Saiyed, who is engaged in fundamental research in Parkinson's disease, is among 18 young scientists across the world to have been shortlisted by the National Parkinson's Institute at the University of California, San Francisco.
After completing his masters in bio-technology from Vallabh Vidyanagar's Sardar Patel University, Taslim moved to Germany in 2002 and went on to arm himself with a doctorate in molecular neurobiology from Maxplanck Institute for Brain Research at Frankfurt.
'Parkinson disease as a research subject has not been explored by Indian students, so I wanted to explore that area, says Taslim who is currently on a vacation visiting his parents. But he hardly finds anytime to spend with his folks as Parkinson's is very much on his mind here too as he attends medical seminars in his quest to create awareness about the disease.
''Neurologists here prescribe old medicines that were in vogue during the 80s. Since then, contemporary research has made much headway, but here we still depend on old drugs'' he says expressing unhappiness at the treatment given to Parkinson's patient here.
His next passion being education, Taslim has been delivering lectures in schools, especially those run by the minority community. “Students are so curious. Unfortunately, Muslim students especially girls, have nobody to look up to. Guiding them has been the most
rewarding experience,” he added.

The Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has decided to set up a high tech Media Centre. The Centre will make Community Radio and Community Television Network functional within the campus.
Vice Chancellor Prof. P. K Abdul Aziz is taking keen interest in establishing the centre. He has also sanctioned Rs. one crore for the purpose .
The University has recently set-up a three camera studio at the Department of Mass Communication where students get hands-on training in TV & radio production. The Vice Chancellor has asked the Department of Mass Communication to work on a detail proposal.

The Moulana Azad Financial Corporation, which has been set up by the Government of Maharashtra, on the lines of Andhra Pradesh Minority Finance Corporation, has recently sanctioned the following amounts for Minorities. Mr. Ameen Patel is its Chairman. 110 needy persons were sanctioned loans for self-employment scheme at an expenditure of Rs. 3 crores. 70 Applicants were granted loan for education, spending Rs. 1 crore. Loan has been sanctioned for 241 persons for business under self employment scheme at Rs. 50,000/- each. Also Rs. 2 crore was sanctioned to 241 persons for business. The condition of providing guarantors for getting loans has been waived. Only 20 forms are received every day by the Corporation for various loans. They have called for large number of people to apply. A budget of Rs. 20 crore has been earmarked for the year 2007-08 for distribution by the Corporation.