As India's quality of schooling plummets, here's how Budget 2019 can help

The school education system in India is facing a shortage of trained teachers and a lack of proper infrastructure.

 

Interim Budget 2019: India stepped up its spending on school education by 9.35% from 2014-15 (Rs 45,722.41 crore) to 2018-19 (Rs 50,000 crore). But education’s share in the total union budget fell from 2.55% to 2.05% in this period, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of budgetary data.

On February 1, 2019, when the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) presents its last budget before general elections, it will have to address a critical issue in India’s school education: Its quality compares poorly with many south Asian and BRICS nations even though India spends a higher percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education.

In rural India, almost half of grade V students cannot read a grade II text and more than 70% them cannot do division, said the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2018. These numbers indicate a fall in standards over the last 10 years.

Twin problems of school funding: low allocation and underutilisation

Till April 2018, school education in India was mostly covered by three centrally-sponsored schemes:

• Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA or education for all) that aims to provide universal education to all children between the ages of 6 to 14 years.
• Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA or national middle education mission) which facilitates secondary education.
• Teacher Education which aims to create sound institutional infrastructure for pre-service and in-service training of elementary and secondary school teachers.

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Govt's intent to present 'regular budget' serious, grave: Congress

Tewari said the NDA-BJP government does not have the electoral mandate and it does not have the electoral legitimacy to present six full budgets in five years.

 

 

Interim Budget 2019: The Congress on Thursday said it will strongly oppose both inside and outside Parliament the presentation of a "full budget" by the BJP-led NDA government as it has "no electoral legitimacy" and the step will go against set precedents and Parliamentary traditions.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari termed as "serious and grave" reports claiming that the BJP-led Government was planning to present a "regular budget" and demanded that it should follow constitutional propriety and only presents a vote-on-account on February 1, 2019 ahead of general elections.

BJP sources have indicated that the Modi government is likely to present a full-fledged budget with a slew of announcements on welfare measures relating to farmers, youth and women.

"A budget is budget. The government is likely present a full-fledged budget. There is no such rule that the government before elections should not present a budget for the entire year. The new government may make changes after the polls if it so wishes," a sources in BJP said.

Tewari said if the reports in public space are correct then it would be "a flagrant violation" of all parliamentary conventions, procedures and traditions that have been followed over the past seven decades since the Constitution of India came into effect.

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What 2019 Budget can do to help India clean its air, reduce coal addiction

Addressing policy issues are important if India is to fulfill its commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement 2015 to install 175 giga watt (GW).

 

Interim Budget 2019: India has one of the world’s largest programmes to expand renewables--a doubling of capacity over the next four years--but India’s ambitious 2022 target of generating enough non-coal energy to replace the equivalent of 175 coal-powered plants is veering off track

On February 1, 2019, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a chance to get things back on track, help India reduce its addiction to coal, help clean the country’s air and meet the global climate-change commitments of the world’s fourth-fastest growing carbon polluter

After record growth in the installed capacity of renewables over the four years to 2017, capacity addition slowed down in 2018. The main reasons: an anti-dumping duty imposed by the government on imported solar modules to aid domestic manufacturing, higher rates of taxation under the goods and service tax (GST) and unclear policy.

So, the last budget before 2019 general elections is of particular significance to the renewables sector, which comprises electricity from solar, wind, hydro and bio power.

The upcoming budget can help remove policy uncertainties from the sector and provide “long-term indications”, Daanish Verma, executive vice president, sustainable investment banking, YES Bank, told IndiaSpend.

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