india has pompously declared its aim to be the Vishwa Guru (Global teacher), with the Amrit Kaal (opportune time for realizing full human potential) ahead providing the springboard. The nation has already notified grandiose plans for internationalizing higher education in line with its vision of restoring the glory of India in ancient times, when universities (in the real sense of the term) at Takshashila, Nalanda, Vallabhi, and Vikramshila attracted thousands of students from across Akhand Bharat and various part of the good old world.
In the Union Budget 2023, as percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), there is only a marginal increase in expenditure on Health and Education from 1.4 and 2.1 in FY 2019 to 2.8 and 2.9 respectively in FY2023. The National Education Policy 2020 made it clear that the education budget needs to be at least 6% of GDP. Successive governments have been winking at this ‘at least 6% of GDP’ thumb rule, ever since the Kothari
Commission (1968) recommended 6 per cent of the GDP as the minimum allocation for the education sector. At a time when many of the developing nations are investing as much as 15% of their total GDP in the education sector, in India, regardless of the dispensation at the Centre, the allocation for education has been hovering over the halfway mark of even the bare minimum of 6%.
In FY 2023-24, the Union government proposes to spend over Rs1.12 lakh crore towards the education sector. The outlay of the Ministry of Education for the next financial year is Rs1,12,898.97 crore. The Ministry’s Department of School Education and Literacy has been allocated Rs 68,804.85 crore, while the Higher Education Department has been allocated
Rs 44,094.62 crore. As per the revised estimates of 2022-23 financial year shown in budget documents, the budget for higher education for the current financial year stands at Rs 40,828.35. The School Education Department got Rs 59,052.78. That is, the projected expenditure on school and higher education has been raised by around 8.3 per cent, compared to 2022-23.
The School Education Department plays a pivotal role in preparing students for higher education. Unless most (if not all), of its core requirements are met, the goal of 50 per cent Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education by 2035 (compared to the present 26.3%) envisaged in NEP 2020 will remain a pipe dream.
In absolute terms, the allocation to the School Education Department was Rs 63,449 crore in the 2022-23 budget as against 51,970 crore (revised) in 2021-22 and Rs 51,842 crore (actual) in 2020-21. The allocation of Rs 63,449 crore in 2022-23 was Rs 11,608 crore more than the actual expenditure of Rs 51,842 crore in 2021-22. The revised budget estimates of 2021-22 suggest that the budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Education declined by Rs 5,222 crore, of which Rs 2,904 crore pertained to the Department of School Education and Rs 2,319 crore to the Department of Higher Education.Â
The percentage of 2022-23 budget allocation to the Department of Higher Education stands at 39.2 — marginally higher than the actual expenditure of 38.4 per cent in 2020-21. The Samagra Shiksha scheme, though designed for reversing learning losses, has been allocated Rs 37,453 crore in 2023-24 Â — hike of 0.18 per cent over the Rs 37,383 crore allocated in 2022-23. Mercifully, the outlay for PM-Poshan has been increased by 13.3 per cent, with the allocation going up from Rs 10,233 crore in 2022-23 to Rs 11,600 crore.
Many rosy plans have been unveiled without corresponding allocations. As for education and skilling, there is going to be revamped teachers’ training via District Institutes of Education and Training. A National Digital Library is going to be set up for children and adolescents. It is not clear whether this would be an expansion of the National Digital Library pilot project launched by the Centre in 2016. Under the NDL pilot project, IIT Kharagpur runs an online repository of texts and video lectures on various subjects, ranging from humanities to sciences.
States will be encouraged to set up physical libraries at panchayat and ward levels. The National Book Trust and the Children’s Book Trust will be encouraged to provide non-curricular titles in regional languages and English to the physical libraries. Noticeably, no funds have been earmarked for the library project in the 2023-24 Budget. That apart, there has been no separate allocation for the National Digital University project announced in 2022.
Strangely, the budget for Digital India’s e-learning initiatives has not changed. The amount allocated in the previous year’s budget was Rs 421 crore (reduced from Rs 645 cr in the year before that). The amount remains the same this year as well. We can imagine the progress that digital learning initiatives can make with all their efforts!
On the whole, the budgetary allocation for education as a percentage of total expenditure has dropped over the past seven years, from 10.4% to 9.5%, according to the Economic Survey 2022-23. While the expenditure on social services increased from
Rs 9,15,500 crore to Rs 21,32,059 crore, the share of education within this umbrella category dwindled from 42.8% to 35.5% between the financial years 2015-2016 and 2022-2023, according to budgetary documents.
A part of this has been attributed to the faster growth in spending on health and other measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The share of education in total expenditure declined from 10.7% in 2019-2020 to 9.1% in the first COVID year and remained stagnant in the following year, before being raised to 9.5% in the budgetary estimates for 2022-2023.
Appreciably, as part of the Vision for Amrit Kaal, opportunities for citizens with focus on youth, growth and job creation, and strong and stable macro-economic environment have been identified.The Saptarishi of Amrit Kaal — seven priorities-are: inclusive development, reaching the last mile, infrastructure and investment, youth power, unleashing the potential, financial sector, and green growth. For achieving all these goals, the Ministries concerned must do ghor tapasyas.
