Page 45 - EducationWorld March 2022

Squeezing resources for post-pandemic education

Budget 2022-23 Budgeted Savings Comment
(Expenditure) (Rs.crore) (Rs.crore)
Establishment expenses 692,214 83,065 Estb. expenditure is too high (17.55 percent of total
expenditure), reduce by 12 percent
Fertilizer, petroleum & 343,946 17,197 Reduce by better targeting, reducing gold plating etc
food subsidy (5 percent)
Non-merit middle class ____ 258,800 Non-merit subsidies are estimated at 10 percent of GDP
subsidies (higher education, (Rs.258 lakh crore). Prune by 1 percent
electricity, piped water,
suburban rail etc)
Interest payout 940,651 94,065 Reduce by retiring public debt through additional
public sector privatisation (10 percent)
Defence 385,371 19,268 Defence services can cut expenditure by 5 percent and
_________ ________ make it up by undertaking civil construction projects
Sub-total: 2,362,182 472,395
Budget 2022-23 (Receipts) Budgeted Savings Comment
Corporate tax 720,000 7,200 1 percent additional remedial education tax
Income tax 70,000 5,900 Rs.1,000 flat tax on all IT payers (59 million)
PSE privatisation 65,000 150,000 Raise this amount by accelerating PSE privatisation
_________ ________
Sub-total: 1,485,000 163,100
Grand total: 635,495

EW recommendations for developing human capital
1) Invest Rs.100,000 crore for libraries, laboratories and lavatories in deficient government schools
2) Invest additional Rs.100,000 crore in ICDS/anganwadis
3) Invest additional Rs.100,000 crore in national primary health care centres network
4) Invest additional Rs.130,000 crore in digital infrastructure in public schools
5) Invest additional Rs.100,00 crore in skilling centres & Atal Tinkering labs
6) Invest additional Rs.105,495 crore in making 20 public universities world-class

(2016) and the Dr. K. Kasturirangan interrupted and continuous neglect of million complete higher secondary
Committee (2018). Moreover ab initio human capital have been disastrous. school and 35 million are in higher
since EducationWorld was promoted Contemporary India whose witless education institutions, none of which
in 1999 with the mission to “build the leadership and middle class seri- are ranked among the Top 200 in the
pressure of public opinion to make ously entertain global super-power World University Rankings league ta-
education the #1 item on the national ambitions, hosts 300 million illiter- bles of the authoritative QS and Times
agenda,” your editors have been urg- ate adults. Moreover because of ad- Higher Education.
ing the Centre and states to raise an- ministrative and governance neglect, As a result the productivity of In-
nual outlays for diligently educating 25 percent of well-paid teachers of dian industry is several multiples be-
the world’s largest child and youth the country’s 1.2 million government low its foreign counterparts. It’s well-
population to encash the country’s schools are absent every day. As a re- known that productivity of American
demographic dividend. All to no avail. sult of multi-grade ill-equipped class- and Japanese shopfloor employees is
Since independence the national out- es, 56 percent of class V children in 10 x of their Indian counterparts and 5
lay for education has averaged 3-3.25 rural government schools can’t read x in China. Likewise, in the agriculture
percent of GDP with otherwise spend- class II textbooks or solve simple three sector foodgrain per hectare yields in
thrift governments of all hues and digit division sums as repeatedly testi- Punjab (India’s breadbasket state) are
stripes at the Centre and states fool- fied by the Annual Status of Educa- one-tenth and one-fifth of the US and
ishly ignoring our advice to accord top tion Report of the highly-respected China. Ditto in the services — espe-
priority to developing our abundant Pratham Education Foundation. Un- cially government services — sector.
and high-potential human capital. surprisingly, of 260 million children The root cause of these glaring pro-
The consequences of this open, un- who enrol in primary classes, only 35 ductivity disparities is relatively poor

MARCH 2022 EDUCATIONWORLD 45