Covid curse falls on govt grant of research fellowship in varsities

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By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, April 1: More than three years have gone by since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, but the damage done to various sectors is yet to be undone. Research studies have been badly hit since the pandemic outbreak, and the data shows that the grant of research fellowship by the Ministry of Science and Technology now remains barely one-third of the 2019-20 level in the country.

The Ministry of Science and Technology, which has the principal mandate to nurture research activities to help in guiding evolution of a knowledge-based society, has reported sharp decline in the number of grants of research fellowships in various categories.

In 2019-20, the Ministry of Science and Technology in a written reply to a starred question in the Lok Sabha asked by Congress MP Gaurav Gogoi stated that a total of 11738 research fellowships were granted in various categories. Three years later, the number was sharply down to 4107. This translated into 65 per cent of the research fellowships granted annually vanishing in the country.

After the 2019-20 high of the grant of 11738 research fellowship by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the number had been declining year after year. The Ministry granted only 8390 research fellowship in 2020-21 – the year of the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak of a big scale in the country when most of the institutions had been shut down or shifted to the virtual mode of functioning.

The number kept declining even after as the Ministry of Science and Technology granted a total of 7032 research fellowships in 2021-22. The number sharply came down in 2022-23 when the Ministry of Science and Technology granted just 4107 research fellowships.

Ministry of Science and Technology has been implementing several fellowship schemes, including major fellowship schemes such as Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) of Department of Science and Technology (DST), National Postdoctoral Fellowship (N-PDF) of Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) and Junior / Senior Research Fellowship (JRF / SRF) and Research Associates (RA) of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Department of Biotechnology (DBT).

The grant of fellowship under INSPIRE is now just half of the 2019-20 level, cut from 4276 in 2019-20 to 2179 in 2022-23. The fate of fellowships under INSPIRE-Faculty was worse, with number declining from 711 in 2019-20 to 289. Similar cuts were seen across the rest of the categories.

“There are very less number of students who are getting good amount of fellowship. In fact, in case of state universities, there are no fellowship grants to the research scholars,” said a research fellow.