Stealing the future

IRONICALLY, on a day (Friday) when SC category candidate Kanishak Kataria, by topping the prestigious civil services examination, proved that if given a level playing field, the sky was the limit for the classes deprived and oppressed for centuries, the embezzlement scam of Rs 3.53 crore meant for post-matric scholarships (PMS) to Haryana’s SC/BC students came to light. Acting briskly, the Haryana Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes Department has done well to suspend four officials accused of complicity in transferring the money into forged Aadhaar-linked accounts, pending an inquiry. 

Such frauds are particularly repugnant because hinged on them is the future of many a bright student. Millions of SC and BC children are still pushed out of school by their parents’grinding poverty. Distressingly, money meant for these deserving children regularly gets siphoned off. Going by the frequency with which crores of rupees sanctioned for the real beneficiaries have been diverted over the years, among other factors, it is no surprise that the calculation of the founding fathers of our Constitution — that the welfare measures extended to uplift the SCs and BCs would be withdrawn in a couple of decades as by then they would have got equal status — has gone horribly awry. More than 70 years after Independence, a huge population remains wretchedly mired in the socio-economic swamp as state after state is shamefully rocked by scandalous misappropriation of funds. 

Worse, the swindlers even ingeniously get around any means employed to plug the loopholes, such as online transfers meant to stop linkage from beneficiaries’ Aadhaar cards. Aren’t there enough corrective steps that can be taken to prevent such recurrences? In February, Tamil Nadu exploded with its Himalayan Rs 800-crore fraud in the disbursal of Centre-funded post-matric scholarship meant for Adi Dravidar students. Earlier, in the past two years, multi-crore frauds have also been reported in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh with a similar modus operandi of depositing scholarship money in fake accounts opened using the students’ Aadhaar details. Spreading like a virus, these fraudsters are stealing the future of the underprivileged. It must stop.