Shree Ganeshaya Namah
India is a land of diversity. India is a land of
opportunity. Diversity in culture, diversity in dreams, and diversity in
aspirations of people marks India. But there is very less diversity in struggle
by students in different parts of the country.
Around 1,300,000 students appear for IIT entrance exams
alone. Of these 10,000 would finally get admission in 17 IIT Engineering
colleges, across the country. A selection percentage of less than 1 percent
marks the stature of top engineering colleges in India.
Once a student competes in a competitive exam, he/she is
called for counselling. Counselling is a seat selection process for admission,
where students have to reserve their seat by paying a certain sum of money.
This sum can vary from college to college and can comprise of a sum or Rs. 5000
to over Rs. 100,000.
Once selected, it’s time for managing finances. Expenses
during study consist of
- college fee, other college expenses (like examination fee, additional training costs, cost of books and study material)
- laptop or other equipment (necessary and not included in college fee)
- travel costs from home to college (over 90% of students have to go to another city for further studies),
- food and lodging charges,
- And expenses for maintaining social circles (this is the young age, where students have to make their network and social circle for life).
Now who funds these costs? Typically the costs can vary from
100,000 over 4 years in some govt. sponsored engineering colleges to over 200,000
in a single year in some private colleges. Banks can fund only up-to 400,000
without any mortgage and that too only for college fees and other basic
expenses. The rest has to be funded by the student and student’s family.
(Another thing very important to note is that in India, negligible number of
Engineering colleges provide any source of income while studying)
As per the research conducted by a leading columnist with
financial express in 2011, the income of over 206M families (over 85% of all
Indian families) falls below 3.4 Lakhs per annum. Most families have to borrow
to support higher education of their children.
First the initial amount for booking the seat is paid, possibly with
help from a family member or acquaintance and admission is secured. Then parents
with student have to rush to banks for loans in order to fund the remaining.
For a student from an average income family, this means that
they have to manage over 2-3 lakhs in addition to the bank loans. This is not
easy for someone with family income under 3-4 lakhs per annum where the student
may not be the only dependent.
There are many students who despite getting admission are
forced to use unscrupulous means to fund their costs while studying. Or have to
suffer and prepare for another year for a college where fees and other expenses
are low or often are psyched to suicide. Many of those who get admitted barely
meeting the minimum needed expenses are not able to buy the needed books, buy a
laptop or other necessities, may be even the fee for canteen charges.
These students can definitely payback the sum borrowed, but
no-one is there to lend them based on their talent, their capabilities. Banks
and other financial institutions have made it a business and earn billions of
rupees every year in interest to be paid out to already wealthy investors as
dividends.
This is not only number and statistics but real people.
Sudha(name changed) from a small village Rasulpur, dist. Samastipur, Bihar toped
the Matriculation exams of the district, and got a scholarship for her studies
by Govt. of Bihar. This scholarship came to her bank account only after 2 years
and was not sufficient to fund her preparation for engineering entrance exams.
Finally she competed in AIEEE but could not achieve the best of ranks. She
could get an admission in a good Engineering college. The booking fee for her
course was over 50,000 rupees. Total expense in 4 years was over 5 lakhs. Her
father, a farmer in the village, could aspire to fund his daughter but fails by
a big gap. Practically he could not even pay the fees needed for booking a seat
during counselling session.
Another student Dipti (name changed) got admission to a
prestigious college in New Delhi, but could not pay the booking amount and the
total expenses. Her father is not a farmer but a worker in Tata Steel Plant in
Jamshedpur. There are numerous such stories of lakhs of students every year,
who have to suffer despite being among the top students in their village, town
or city.
For us the journey started with helping Sudha and Dipti.
With our help they could get admission and meet their expenses of study in the
prestigious college where they got admission, based on their merit. They are
currently continuing their study with excellent grades and get continuous
funding for un-specified expenses from us. They would graduate in 2016 to
fulfil their aspirations and dreams of their family.
Join us in supporting education in India and helping these
students to get much more from their education than bothering about their
finances. If their education cannot be funded by their family, we are there.
Reach out to me on aaa.sap@gamil.com to
join us.
As a not for profit organization, we have two streams of fund
collection and fund distribution to students. Only one stream is currently active
and being pursued as below.
Stream of donors: funds are donated by
individuals or company
The donor can specify a fund pool or leave the funds in
general pool without any specification. A fund pool can be a combination of any
number of the following attributes.
Attributes for fund pool
b. A college
c. A stream of engineering or any course
d. A city
e. A state
f. An economic class in terms of annual family income
g. A given expense only – for example laptops
An example of a fund pool would be funds only for female
students in college BIT Sindri studying Computer Science and engineering.
For fund disbursement, we would tie up with colleges for
which fund pools are available. During the counselling session, if a student
chooses to join a college but does not have enough funds, the student can
approach the fund pool and apply for a loan, to get an approval on the spot for
that college. Once the student enrols in the college, he/she would be funded
for all the expenses, which cannot be borne by his/her family.
Continuation of fund pool: Once the student graduates from
college, he/she needs to pay back the loan to the fund pool with a pre-agreed
interest amount as per a pre-agreed payment schedule. The funds provided would
be treated as a loan and concessions available from Govt. of India on education
loan taxation, would be applicable.
The interest amount charged from a fund pool can vary
depending upon the fund pool and the donors to a given fund pool. The amount
collected, would go back to the fund pool. This would enable the fund pool to
grow and cover more and more students. Also the fund pool can keep growing with
additional donors joining the fund pool or creating new fund pools.
