The primary school situated in the far south of Sant Kabir Nagar in Uttar Pradesh is the only English medium school in that block. Under the Kayakalp Yojana of the state government, the school has been decorated from outside, but the students of this school are forced to sit on the floor mats in the freezing cold because there are no benches and desks in the school. A school teacher told Gaon Connection on the condition of anonymity that the Budget had come for all things, but the desks and benches, so they could not be procured.

The state of the primary school of Narur village in Jhanjharpur block of Bihar, about 400 kms away from Rautpar, is more or less the same. This school also does not have basic facilities for schools like desk, benches etc. The building of the school was also damaged during the floods in 2019. So, now children are studying in another government building built nearby. There is no blackboard or seating facility. Somehow, the classes are being managed. The school principal Jagdish Prasad said that he has notified the officials several times about it, but they also postpone the matter by stating lack of Budget. 

Meanwhile, Modern madarsa teachers across the country have not been able to get their salaries for the past 50 months. Talking to the officials, it was known that the salaries are delayed due to non-receipt of the central government’s share of funds. Students studying in higher education are suffering due to continuous fee hike and agitation is going on in different universities. By and large, there is a Budget problem behind every educational setback.

The country’s education system suffers heavily from lack of the budget. Whether school or higher education, everywhere there is a dearth of funds on school. During the past decade, the country’s expenditure on education has been even lesser than 3% of its GDP (gross domestic product) whereas the proposed universal standard is 6%.

In 2014-15, when the Modi government had presented the Budget for the first time, a Budget of Rs 83,000 crore was allocated to the education sector. Later, in the same year, it was reduced to Rs 69,000 crore. Thereafter, the education Budget did not increase at the required rate.

When Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Budget in July 2019, during the second term of the Modi government, the education sector received a Budget of Rs 94,854 crore, just 15.68% higher than the 2014 Budget whereas the total Budget was increased by more than 55 per cent. The total Budget amounted from Rs 17.95 lakh crore in 2014-15 increased to Rs 27.86 lakh crore in 2019-20.

According to a recent report, the government is mulling the cutback on the school education budget by Rs 3000 crore. The report’s sources in the HRD Ministry had cited the reason of the finance ministry’s falling short of money behind the move. However, later on, the HRD Ministry refuted such reports. 

Nevertheless, the expenditure on education in India is very low. Now, India spends less than 3 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education, while the global standard is 6 per cent. The most prominent suggestion of the Kothari Commission, which was formed in 1964 to determine the education policy, was to spend 6 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) on education. It was also made a national goal in the First National Policy on Education (1968). But this national target has not been achieved even after 40 years today.

 If we talk of global data, it is much better than India. The global average GDP average of spending on education is 4.7%. The US spends 5.6 per cent of its GDP on education. While small countries like Norway and Cuba spend 7 and 13 per cent of their GDP on education, respectively. Both Brazil and South Africa, with a similar economy as that of India, spend about 6 per cent of their GDP on education. 

In India, besides the Budget in the field of education being very low, its distribution is also very uneven. As per the Budget for 2019-20, Rs 94,854 crore were released in the field of education where the Budget for school education is Rs 56,536.63 crore and higher education Budget is Rs 38,317.36 crore.

Out of Rs 38,317.36 crore in higher education, about 1,000 universities in the country share Rs 6,843 crore. The Budget of less than 50 IITs and IIMs located in the country is much higher than the Budget of the universities. The Budget for 23 IIT colleges across the country is Rs 6,410 crore while 20 IIM colleges in the country get Rs 445 crore. That is why India’s university education is in a very critical condition.

Apart from the uneven distribution of the Budget, another problem is that the Budget proposed for the field of education goes largely unspent. According to a report by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), it had happened eight times in the past 10 years when the proposed budget on education could not be spent. As per this report, about Rs 4 lakh crore budget could not be spent in the field of education during 2014 to 2019.

“The government is not at all serious about education,” said Ramon Magsaysay Award winner Sandeep Pandey, who works in the field of education. “We can easily assess it with the education budget and the expenditure on education. Leave alone spending 6 per cent of the GDP, we have not been able to go beyond the figure of 3 per cent in the last decade. It is very disappointing.”

Sandeep Pandey is among those who believe that in a democracy, facilities like education and health should be minimally priced if not free. He also reminded that the ire generated among many universities and educational institutions across the country is somewhere due to the low expenditure on the education budget. He said that this is the reason why Indian educational institutions fail to find a mention among the top educational institutions in the world.

“Everyone knows the importance of education but no policymaker is ready to talk about it,” said Girija Shukla, 60, who runs a school for rural poor children in Arang near Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh. “I have never heard any leader talk about education in my 40-year career. Yes, in their speeches, they definitely say that education creates a future.”

However, according to reports in several newspapers, the central government may increase this year’s education budget by five to eight per cent. This may be due to the proposed new education policy, which recommends increased expenditure on education. The policy aims to take the expenditure on education to 20% of the entire budget expenditure by 2030. Now, it remains to be seen whether the government increases the education budget as per the projection.