The National Fellowship for Scheduled Castes has been warped in ‘bureaucratic casteism’. The Supreme Court-formed-NTF must take note.
Once imagined as a corrective measure to support Bahujan PhD candidates, the NFSC has sadly reproduced the endless waiting and humiliation which has historically characterised the bureaucracy’s repressive treatment of marginalised communities.
Vinay Kumar
12 September 2025
“Justice has always evoked ideas of equality… of proportion of compensation. Equity signifies equality. Rules and regulations, however good they may be, if they fail to achieve this objective, then they are useless.”
— Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
THE NATIONAL FELLOWSHIP FOR SCHEDULED CASTES (‘NFSC’), when it was launched in 2005-06, had posed the promise of equity. It was meant to create a space where Bahujan scholars could pursue higher education and research without being pushed aside by systemic disadvantages.
Implemented by the National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation (‘NSFDC’), a government-owned institution under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, the fellowship was envisioned as a corrective measure to support PhD aspirants from Scheduled Caste communities who narrowly missed qualifying for the Junior Research Fellowship (‘JRF’) by a margin of just a few marks.
The design looked progressive on paper. A monthly fellowship of ₹37,000 along with Housing Rent Allowance, equal to the JRF, was supposed to ensure that scholars from marginalised communities had the resources to devote themselves to research. The vision of NSFDC explicitly speaks of “equitable access to higher education and research opportunities” and of nurturing scholars who can contribute to social justice and nation-building.
But between vision and reality lies the iron wall of bureaucracy—and for Bahujan scholars, that wall is coated with systemic casteism.
It was meant to create a space where Bahujan scholars could pursue higher education and research without being pushed aside by systemic disadvantages.
Endless wait, endless humiliation
Students often wait six to seven months after clearing the University Grants Commission–National Eligibility Test (‘UGC-NET’) to know whether their names appear in the NFSC list. The list itself comes after repeated delays, revisions, and errors. When the names finally appear, the nightmare begins.
The joining process requires signatures from the university and supervisors, followed by uploads on the NSFDC portal (Scholarship and Fellowship Management Portal). At the university and UGC levels, things move relatively quickly. But when files reach the NSFDC office, they get stuck for 40–50 days, sometimes longer. Even a minor error—like an overwritten date or a missing initial—leads to outright rejection. Students must start from scratch, repeat the entire cycle of verifications and wait another four to five months.