More than 1,500 new scooters promised to meritorious girl students in Rajasthan have turned into scrap because of non-use they literally, reports a news agency. These scooters were given under the Kali Bai Bheel Scooty Scheme, launched in 2020, to help girls from poor families continue their studies. In particular, scooters were given to deserving students in two colleges in Banswara to continue to go to school.
To be eligible to apply for the scheme, the applicant’s family income could not exceed ₹2.5 lakh per year. Also in addition, she has to secure at least 65 % marks for the state board exams or in CBSE for the 10th or 12th standard. The total cost incurred on each scooter is ₹ 80,000. In total, the people of Rajasthan have spent ₹ 12 crore on these scooters, which are not at all useful, and instead of being used, they are just lying idle at Vidyamandir College and Hardev Joshi Government Girls College.
Some officials have pointed out that the scooters started being idle because of a likely delay in their distribution, contributed by a political change occasioned by the BJP triumph in the assembly polls last year, which saw the Congress led by Ashok Gehlot being voted out of office. However, the process has remained frozen; the systems, which are in the form of a QR code provided by the finance department once scooters are disbursed to the students, remain inactive on the 1,500 scooters in question.
This kind of policy failure is worrisome and gives credence to the argument that policy goals remain on paper without corresponding practical support for outcomes that students, especially young women in Rajasthan, are expected to derive from such a scheme.
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