Education Sector Is Not Satisfied With Budget 2019

In his Budget speech of 2019 the acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal had laid an emphasis on the youth, cited that India is a country which is amongst the youngest nations of the world and the government relies greatly on its youth.

However, as we all know the Youth is directly related to education system of the country and still there were no such announcement or schemes included for the education sector in this years Budget, however, there seems to be some increment in terms of allocation of funds to the educational organizations. While the most of allocations were only dedicated to school level systems with the infusion of 20 per cent more funds for the National Education Mission. The total grants for the NEM varied to Rs. 38,572 crores. Some other notable announcements for the education sector was the establishment an institute for the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI), new AIIMS in Haryana and a scheme to increase about two lakh more seats in the education institutes across the country. There was also a decline in the funding for the provision of newly constituted Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA), which left the experts disappointed. In an era when almost 40 % of the nation’s population comprises of children’s, the budget had failed to consider the expectations of the nation, as youth as related to education sector were neither a part of this year’s budget speech nor were they included anywhere in the 10 key point that denotes the vision for 2030. The overall outlay for budget on children is around 3.25 per cent of the union budget, with a 0.01 per cent increase since last financial year which is negligible. However in gross terms to children’s it has got an increment of Rs 9,358 crores, whereas, it is to be considered that some key parts such as the National Nutrition Mission (NNM) has been considered for a boost of Rs.410 crores and thus the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) also got an infusion of Rs 4,227 crores. Looking forward for the universalized coverage of the services given ICDS for the children to get an improvement with this additional allocation.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://indianexpress.com/article/education/education-budget-2019-analysis-disappointing-say-stakeholders-5564719/