The objective of scholarships offered by the government is to provide financial assistance to the meritorious students who belong to low income families so that they can meet some part of their expenses while pursuing higher studies.
With the sole objective of making the education accessible for all, the government of India and the state governments run many scholarships for the students who are pursuing studies at different levels. Regardless of the religion, caste, creed or class to which any student belong, the different scholarships given by central and state governments cover almost each student in the nation.
The scholarships given by government are categorized into two types; centrally-funded government scholarships and State-funded government scholarships. The centrally-funded scholarships are sponsored by the Govt. of India and these are disbursed by different states. On the other hand the state-funded scholarships are sponsored and disbursed by respective state’s government.
As the name suggests, the scholarships offered by the central government are solely distributed by the Indian government and they are disbursed at the state/district level. These scholarships are for the citizens of India, without any consideration of the state to which they belong to. Some of the major departments of Government of India which are involved in providing scholarship opportunities for students include Ministry of Human Resource Development,
Ministry of Minority Affairs, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disability, and others.
Similar to the central government, the state governments of different states also provide scholarships for the students who are domicile of that state. The state government scholarships are only provided to the permanent residents of respective states. The number of scholarships may vary from state to state, but the key objective is to ensure a reduced rate of drop-out of students from various schools and colleges.
All these scholarships are awarded to the students on the basis of their results of Senior Secondary Examination, for pursuing graduate or postgraduate studies in colleges, universities, and for professional courses, such as Medical, Engineering etc.
The total number of scholarships is primarily divided between the State Education Boards based on the population of the State in the age group of 18-25 years, after segregating the share of boards like CBSE and ICSE, on the basis of number of students passing out from various Boards in the country. A total of 50% of the scholarship is reserved for girls. The total number of scholarships earmarked to a State Education Board is distributed amongst the pass outs of the Science, Humanities and Commerce streams. In case of shortfall in the number of applications, the scholarship slots can be inter-changed.
