The times have changed and so have changed the expectations of the people from the Government who want not only hassles free procedures, short and precise , but also completed within shortest possible time . Students , in particular, is such a group of our society who otherwise want things done without any delays and lengthy and protracted procedures. In addition to that , the Prime Minister has regularly been stressing upon simplifying , shortening and progressively doing away with lengthy and time consuming procedures. In tune with that transformation, the UT Government of Jammu and Kashmir is shortly going to simplify procedures for obtaining scholarships by students and to take on effectively, any trend of officialdom in causing any sort of harassment to the students . It is decided to reduce the number of the documents that are required to be submitted at the time of applying for grant of a scholarship.
It is not that instances of wilful delays and protracted paper work were not being received by the Government but since the obsolete practices were there for decades together , an intervention of the sort of the proposed one needed certain will power on the part of the Government. Unrequired and optional documents being treated as mandatory, often gave room to causing undue hardships to students . Visiting offices repeatedly and other allied reasons have been responsible for there being never 100 per cent enrolment under various schemes and it is a welcome step that this aspect led the UT Government constitute a committee on which are members drawn from top administrative set up , to look into the ways of cent per cent participation of the eligible candidates hence the proposed decision to streamline and simplify the procedures of obtaining scholarships. We appreciate that the members on the committee have taken a uniform view to prescribe guidelines in respect of all schemes of scholarships by doing away with or waiving off submission of certain papers and documents.
We are otherwise unable to understand the reasons as to why periodic reviews are not taken as a policy of the administration in respect of prevalent procedures and practices that are in vogue in our official systems and the hierarchy not only to reduce the unnecessary work load in the offices but more importantly, provide relief to the “applicant” people visiting these offices. Practices allowed to continue for decades result in delays as the officials have to go by the ‘prescribed’ checklists and often lead to providing room for corruption. For example, the amount paid under different schemes of scholarships whether needing a revision or not appears to be non-negotiable and non-thinkable which otherwise has to be somewhere in tune with what the prescribed amount would ‘get’ the beneficiaries actually from the market and it is noteworthy that this aspect too was going to be considered by the committee with prospects of an upward revision. Warding off moves even for unscrupulous attempts like double benefits under different schemes is proposed to be done by starting a single web portal .
That Deputy Commissioners too are assigned a role in the exercise was definitely going to yield better results but more onus was on the field staff of the Department of Social Welfare who, not only have to do the identification work but make different schemes fairly known among the eligible students.Though formally the committee has not submitted its recommendations but since the UT Chief Secretary is monitoring the exercise personally, we expect it to be early with better results.
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