Very little is spent on education in India as compared to developed countries, that is, education is not in the priority of the government.
To educate all and bring all under development, the new budget is like a message of progress of excellent education. This has opened the way to educate not only the uneducated section of India, but also the semi-educated and poor-helpless people and bring them into the mainstream of development. It has been said that there is very little expenditure on education in India as compared to developed countries, that is, education is not in the priority of the government. The budget is made more on defense expenditure than that. But this time the budget has probably been kept the highest in India.
It is worth mentioning that in this year’s universal education budget, thirty seven thousand three hundred and eighty three crore rupees have been allocated. Last year, thirty thousand crore rupees were allocated under this scheme. The question is, will education progress at every level by increasing the budget of the government? According to experts, the budget and resources that are needed for education are yet to be met. Therefore, education needs to be given fertilizer and water at every level.
The budget allocated for education in the last years has increased the work of basic education resources, scholarships to poor and talented students and the process of recruitment on vacant posts of teachers, but still needs to be accelerated. In this year’s budget, the central government has expressed its commitment towards education by allocating more money on education than last year.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s allocation of one lakh four thousand two hundred seventy seven crore rupees for the education sector in the Union Budget for the financial year 2022-23, opens the doors of many possibilities in the field of education. Which is Rs 11,053.41 crore i.e. twelve percent more than the previous financial year. This budget is Rs 93,224 crore in the budget estimate for the financial year 2021-22 and Rs 88,001 crore in the revised estimate. The allocation for school education in the financial year 2022-23 has been kept at Rs 63,449.93 crore, which is about Rs 9,000 crore compared to the financial year 2021-22.
While Rs 37,383.36 crore has been allocated for Samagra Shiksha, which is Rs 6,000 crore as compared to last year’s budget allocation and Rs 4,115 crore has been allocated for Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas. In the financial year 2022-23, Rs 40,828 crore has been allocated to the education department, which is an increase of 6.6 percent over the previous year. On the other hand, Rs 40,828 crore has been allocated for higher education.
This time no deduction has been made like last year. The most important thing in the new budget is that emphasis has been given on digital education. There has been talk of setting up a digital university. The question is whether education can be improved by these measures or will other measures have to be taken?
Forty percent of the country’s population is under the age of eighteen, but unfortunately only three percent of the GDP is spent on education. Whereas in the new education policy, there is talk of spending at least six percent of the GDP in the education sector. This will help in transforming education by linking all types of government and semi-government schools and institutions including Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas to the new education policy.
Taking a new initiative in the field of higher education under the construction of a new India, the government has set the target of providing door-to-door education by establishing ‘digital universities’ under the new scheme. With this, where students will be able to get education in their mother or regional language, they will be able to get all the educational material which will be necessary for them. Through Digital University, students will be able to get simple and quality education of global level. This will be of special benefit to the poor students who are unable to get higher education due to distance.
It is worth noting that this university will be of ISTE standard. Those students who are weak in Hindi and English, but want to improve their career by getting education in regional languages, will be of special benefit due to education in regional languages in digital universities. To what extent this initiative of the Center will affect, it will tell the time to come, but it can be said that the Central Government has definitely caught the attention of the people by doing a new experiment.
According to the Finance Minister, the villagers and forest dwellers-tribals of remote villages have been the most deprived of education during the Corona period. To compensate for this, the government is going to start supplementary education on a large scale. Will this step of the government be able to establish a system of better education for the illiterate in the villages and forests or will it remain a scheme? In a new experiment, the Finance Minister has presented a plan to promote the new agricultural policy from agricultural universities. This will make the curriculum of agricultural universities more practical.
In this, apart from organic farming, important topics like zero budget, natural need will be modified. With this, students will get better information regarding new agricultural technology and more production. In this sequence, new courses will also be started in universities for urban development. For this, five institutes will be made Center of Excellence. With this, every practical need of the students will be met. This scheme is attractive in appearance, but unless the ground conditions of education improve, will the scheme be implemented properly?
In the new budget, education of new skills will be given in various ITIs of the country. Under this, online training will also be given to the students. After the training, job search and training will be made easy for the students through online medium. Significantly, the Center has promised to connect lakhs of students with employment under skill development. This will generate large scale employment in villages and cities.
The government has promised to provide six million new jobs in the new budget. Thousands of jobs will be found in the field of education. The allocation for Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has been increased from Rs.8344.44 crore to Rs.8,495 crore in the budget. With this, where new technology institutes will be established, new students will get better opportunities for All India Council for Technical Education (AIIT).
This will lead to the development of AICTE Urban Planning courses and changes are likely to be made in the curriculum for natural, zero budget, organic farming and modern agriculture. At the same time, a provision of Rs 5320.91 crore has been made for University Grants Commission (UGC) and AICTI. It is worth mentioning that last year it was Rs 5139.2 crore.
To educate all and bring all under development, the new budget is like a message of progress of excellent education. This has opened the way to educate not only the uneducated section of India, but also the semi-educated and poor-helpless people and bring them into the mainstream of development. This initiative of the Center to impart education on the basis of Hub and Scope model is the beginning of the digital age of education. With this, those students sitting at home will also be able to get higher, middle, school education, who are unable to go to college or university due to the financial condition of the family. The new budget for education will show a new path of progress to the Indian society, it should be expected.