higher-education

‘Launch corporation to fund education of Scheduled Castes’

Gayathri | Wednesday, October 5, 2016 4:40 PM IST

Chairman of theIndian Council for Social Sciences Research (ICSSR) Sukhdev Thorat has stated that the government should for a finance corporation to provide higher education loans at nil interest rate to poor students, like the practice in Australia andCanada.


Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the conference on 'Creating Better World: Dr B R Ambedkar's Vision and Prospective', he said that the Scheduled Caste community continues to be oppressed and a separate finance corporation would eliminate poverty among them. 'Through the finance corporation, loans should be given to help the Scheduled Caste community to invest in shares of private companies so that they get a decent annual income,' he said.

'Due to lack of higher education and capital, the SCs don't have access to entrepreneurship, and eventually they end up working as labourers and suffer discrimination,' he said.

The policymakers should come up with new measures to ensure better living standard of the Scheduled Caste community by providing them land for farming and dairy business, Thorat said.

He said that it is unfortunate that Ambedkar was tagged as a dalit leader. 'In reality, he was also a nation builder and has left his footprints in almost all the sectors. TheDamodar Valley and Hirakud Valley hydro-power projects were the brainchild of Dr Ambedkar. Setting up of the Reserve Bank of India and Central Water Commission too were the important projects which were realized due to the efforts of Dr Ambedkar,' he said.