Research scholars form human chain for hike in scholarship

As a symbolic protest against the Central government’s apathy towards various issues concerning the hike in research scholarship, around 2,000 students belonging to various institutes formed a human chain near the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Wednesday.

Kunal Soni, a research scholar from IISc, said that students from Nimhans, NCBS, Raman Research Institute (RRI) and JNCASR participated in the protest.

The protest started at 2 pm and continued till around 4 pm, with the human chain extending from CNR Rao Junction to MS Ramaiah Hospital on BEL Road.

Innovative ways

The gesture on Wednesday is part of a series of innovative ways that students have come up with to highlight their plight. Students of IISc, for example, organised candlelight vigils and staged a play recently to drive home the point.

A campaign to send Re 1 postcards to the MHRD and Finance Ministry has been planned on Thursday.

Although students had obtained oral permission from the police for the protest from IISc to Mekhri Circle, it was withdrawn at the last minute citing inconvienece to the public as the reason. The protest took place with slight modifications. No outaward incident was reported.

A nearly 50 per cent hike in the research fellowship was announced by the government in October last year. However, a number of issues relating to the dates of implementation still persist. A recent notification from MHRD stated that hikes would be implemented from February 2015.

There is no clarity particularly on this issue as previous notifications from other government agencies had put the dates as October, 2014 and even December, 2014.