Nearly 40,000 students apply for the Tata Institute of Social Sciences every year. The total capacity per year isn’t more than 750. Because of reservation and quota, many students from marginalized backgrounds have been able to make it through, and consequently, more and more students are applying from marginalized communities and rural parts of India.
Rupali is one of them. She had heard of the college’s reputation, and the knowledge one gets through the campus stay. So she applied for the Master’s program for the class of 2021-23. Her hard work paid off, and she got selected!
She was super excited to join, but the campus remained closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. For Rupali, this became a problem as she did not want to stay at home. The choice before her was to continue her classes in TISS through the online mode or join her second choice, which offered a campus stay.
So, Why Was A Campus Important For Rupali?
Her family consists of two sisters and a brother, one mother, a stepmother, and an alcoholic father. Her home is outside the village, near a river like it always was for marginalized castes. Although other people from her caste have shifted long back to the city, her family has not yet been able to do so. Her father and her mother keep fighting day and night. Her mother works as a farm labourer. People keep asking her parents, “When will you marry her off? What will you get by educating her?”
Rupali, tired of daily fights at home, decided early in life to stay away from family. After giving her 12th board exams, she convinced her mother to let her study further in the nearby town. So she completed her undergraduate degree and found a job away from her hometown. This helped her save money for her higher education.
She always wanted to go into academics, complete her Master’s, get a doctorate, clear JRF to get a scholarship. Now when the campus is closed, she is continuing her classes and living in a rented room. Some of her friends have helped her in setting up a kitchen. However, she fears her savings running out. They won’t last for more than a couple of months. After that, she’d be forced to either return to her hometown or drop out and start working again.
The Way Forward
But she didn’t give up and looked for opportunities to sustain herself. Fortunately, she received a full scholarship and an offer to stay in a hostel from one of the charitable trusts in Mumbai. I remember the stress she was under a few days back and the happy smile on her face today!
But the point here is, was the pain and stress one has to go through to get educated in this country necessary? Can education be made more accessible for every girl who wants to learn? Rupali is not alone. I talked to one more girl from the same institute; she is in her 3rd semester and staying away from home. Her parents think she is on campus.
Rupali is a fighter who has been able to find her way, but everyone cannot. As stated by the World Bank, poverty is one of the most critical factors for determining whether a girl can access and complete her education. There are 25 scholarships offered by different philanthropists available for women, and from the Maharashtra government, there are 38 on the MahaDBT portal. When we try to analyze them, we can find the crucial criteria; the application process is either complicated or insufficient.
To gain any scholarship, one has to make extra efforts. Suppose the educational institutions themselves had the facility to guide the needy students/ women on scholarships and facilitate the same. In that case, many women could benefit from it and can continue their education without having to worry about finances. We need more inclusive scholarships, and more importantly, scholarships that pay a livable income on time.
The author is a Kaksha Correspondent as a part of writers’ training program under Kaksha Crisis.