The union budget 2022-23 presented to Parliament and the public last month has generated considerable confusion and anxiety within the small minority of educationists and educators who look at the big picture. Although India’s education sector is emerging from the pandemic crisis of the longest lockdown of education institutions (82 weeks) worldwide, and a huge challenge of extraordinary remedial education confronts the educators community, the provision of Rs.1.04 lakh crore which is lower than the Rs.1.22 lakh crore budgeted for 2019-20 shows no awareness of this. It’s a business-as-usual allocation for the learning advancement of the world’s largest child and youth population estimated at over 500 million.

A more determined effort should have been made in Budget 2022-23 to get India’s high-potential children and youth in public schools back in class and learning in right earnest. This requires considerable investment in ICT (information communication technologies), teacher training and school infrastructure. In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that the government allocation for public education as a percentage of GDP has been steadily falling from 3.8 percent in 2000-2001 to a mere 2.6 percent in 2022-23. Against this, way back in 1967 the Kothari Commission, the Subramanian Committee (2016) and Kasturirangan Committee (2018) had recommended that annual expenditure on education (Centre plus states) should aggregate 6 percent of GDP. This means that the Central government needs to allocate at least 2 percent of GDP for the states to follow its lead.

Given rising income and wealth inequalities worldwide, the sentient rich are calling for higher taxation of the top 10 percent. But no such call for higher taxes is likely to emerge in India. In the circumstances, Sitharaman could have provided tax incentives for the rich to promote philanthropic education institutions, and support for promoter/owners of the country’s estimated 400,000 low-fees budget private schools by according them MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) status — a long-standing demand — which would enable them to avail concessional loans and enhanced credit awarded to pandemic-hit MSMEs. Moreover with the exodus of disenchanted students from government schools showing no signs of tapering, surely the time has come for deregulating private education.

In the final analysis, there’s only so much the finance minister could have done with a revenue of Rs.39.44 lakh crore of which interest on borrowals is Rs.8.13 lakh crore and the fiscal deficit is Rs.16.61 lakh crore. The big hole in the budget is the Central government’s revenue from its 358 public sector enterprises. With over Rs.1,000 lakh crore invested in them, they should have provided an income of Rs.10 lakh crore. Instead, the government’s non-tax revenue is budgeted a mere Rs.2.69 lakh crore. That’s the strong argument for privatisation. But against the target of Rs.1.75 lakh crore last year, Budget 2022-23 expects a mere Rs.65,000 crore from privatisation. The country continues to pay a huge price for socialism.

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