Evaluate the role of HEFA and targeted schemes such as PM-AJAY in addressing the hostel deficit in Indian higher education.

Higher-education enrolment in India has grown faster than the number of hostel rooms. As a result, students from outside the city often have to rent rooms in unregulated paying-guest (PG) housing. Two tools are meant to help. HEFA lends money to institutions for infrastructure. Targeted grants such as the hostel component of PM-AJAY fund hostels for specific groups. Both help, but neither can close the gap alone.

HEFA: Strengths

• Loans instead of grants: HEFA was approved in 2016 to fund buildings and labs through 10-year loans [1]. Its capital base was later raised to ₹10,000 crore, with a target of raising ₹1,00,000 crore under RISE by 2022 [2].
• Easy terms for older universities: central universities started before 2014 repay only 10% of the principal. The Government pays the other 90% and all the interest [2]. This makes capital cheap for universities such as Delhi University.

HEFA: Limitations

• Driven by demand, not need: institutions must apply themselves, and hostels compete with labs and classrooms for the same loan.
• Pressure on fees: the principal is repaid from 'internal accruals', such as fee income [1]. This could raise fees for the very students that hostels are meant to help.
• It favours premier institutions that earn their own revenue. Smaller state universities benefit little.

PM-AJAY: Strengths

• Focus on equity: it funds new hostels for Scheduled Caste students. Central Universities and NIRF-ranked public institutions can submit proposals based on need-assessment surveys [3].
• It gives grants, so students carry no repayment burden.

PM-AJAY: Limitations

• Narrow coverage: it helps only specified groups. Most students who need housing fall outside it.
• Weak delivery: a Parliamentary Standing Committee (2021) found that the earlier scheme, BJRCY, sanctioned only 819 hostels between 2007-08 and 2020-21. The Committee said the scheme had failed in its aim of a hostel in every block. Merging it into PM-AJAY also cut its funding [4].

Verdict HEFA provides money but no targeting. PM-AJAY provides targeting but not enough scale. The deficit remains in the gap between the two.

Together, they are a useful but incomplete set of tools. The way forward has four parts. Make hostel capacity a condition for approving new colleges. Keep repayment of HEFA hostel loans separate from student fees. Set up the real-time hostel database the Committee recommended [4]. Enforce safety rules for PG buildings. This combination would serve the aims of Article 46 and SDG 4 on fair access to higher education.