When I was listed for a private Scholarship…

When I was listed for a private Scholarship…

A private organization called for best researchers and for scholarship for meritorious scholars in the previous month and I was also applied for both of the awards. From the past years experience, I know that they will not list my name because I don’t like to get it by somebodies influence on the authority of that organization (nowadays most of the awards are given to those who can influence the awarding institution, for that, people use political power, money power and etc. and many of the people are organizing some institution to announce some awards for themselves, it is for publicity and fame, do you know why some universities are giving honorary doctorates to public figures or to some politicians? it is for publicity of that institution, and for political mileage of those authorities). Even though, I applied to become an opponent because I have been informed it only on the last date, and they wanted to reduce the applicants. But, when the list of the awardees came out, many of my friends shocked, but it was an expected result for me, that the list was full of close kin of some influential persons and fortunately I was listed in scholarship list. But, I was not happy, because many of the highly deserving people are out of the list, people with more than four international journal papers are out of the best researcher award and people without any journal paper are in the list with little conference participation. I was totally unhappy and decided to return the money that I get as a scholarship to start another scholarship for best student from financially backward family. But, after a deep thought, my intuition reminded me that they will use the same strategy for their kin even if I start a scholarship with that organization.


I had shared my protest with many people in that organization and somehow they made another list with those highly deserving people but they get only shield or medal and certificate not money and certificate. The scholarships awardees are more than ten including me and get only money about thousand rupees ( only once) and I understood that the list of more than ten is for publicity that this organization has distributed that much scholarship in a year and they would not mention the scholarship amount getting a student anywhere. They need the number/ quantity not the welfare of the deserving student. They announced that they are distributing the awards and scholarships in a public meeting and I have been invited for that public meeting.


But, my intuition stopped me participating that event that if I rightly deserve it, why they want to distribute the money in a public meeting and why I want to go to the stage for receiving that amount(other wise they will not give that money), my intuition reminded me that this is the same tactics that political organizations uses to cover the eye of common man. They are not giving me any certificates or medals or shields but only money, for that I have to participate and go to the stage to get the money. I followed my intuition that I neither participate, nor receive that money.


If they are really interested the welfare or interested to benefit this to the deserving persons, and when I oppose the current system and when I list the reasons, I should list my suggestions to make the system better. Firstly we have to eliminate the favoritism, the only solution use the modern technology such as bar-coded system (to hide the student personal details) for applications and making more than two groups of examiners from in an out of the organization to value the application form and emailing system for scholarship notifications. For the well being of the students, they can reduce the number of scholarship awardees and thereby they can increase the amount of money getting a persons, that can be used to pay the yearly fees of the student, or yearly hostel expenses. Then this scholarship will be highly competitive and valued.