NEW DELHI: The revision of the Post-Matric Scholarship scheme for Scheduled Castes with a 60:40 fund sharing between the Centre and states has been forced by a 2018 formula authored by the social justice ministry that triggered a crisis, putting a question mark on BR Ambedkar’s personal initiative heading into independence to encourage education among the most disempowered social group.
While the Centre and states have constantly played a cat and mouse game on funding, there was a virtual stand-off when social justice ministry stopped clearing the arrears. The outstanding ballooned to around Rs 9,000 crore in 2017.
Till 2017, the PMS followed the “committed liability” (CL) formula by which the state’s annual share was the amount it spent in the last year of a five-year plan period.
As arrears grew, there was grumbling in Delhi that states were depressing their demand in the last plan year to keep their burden low.
Around 2018, the PMS crisis came to a head. Then secretary, social justice and empowerment, told the parliamentary standing committee that the 2018-19 budget of Rs 7,750 crore for the ministry, as against its demand of Rs 11,027 crore, will badly affect the PMS since it was already reeling under accumulated arrears of Rs 8,600 crore till 2017-18.
When the Centre chose to clear the arrears, it made the “CL formula” more strict — shifting CL from “last year of a plan period” to the “highest expenditure in any of the five years”.
As a result, the financial burden overwhelmingly fell on states. Sources said as many as 15 states stopped getting central funds for the scheme while the Centre’s total annual share in PMS dropped to Rs 1,100 crore (10-11%) between 2017-2020. In contrast, till 2017, the Centre’s share was roughly 60%.
This pushed the states to the wall, resulting in a question mark on the PMS, the most sought after scheme among Dalits that has played a key role in increasing the community’s enrolment in higher education post-independence. Insiders and experts argue that making the CL formula stricter in 2018 was a wrong move that was bound to fail if the PMS was to be kept afloat. Now, the revision to peg 60% of the PMS cost on the Centre is a bid to return to a balance.