Spending on education as a share of the central government’s total budgeted expenditure has been falling for the past three years. Compared to 2013-14, the last year of UPA, when education got 4.57% of the total expenditure, there has been a steady decline — 3.65% in 2016-17, according to this Budget’s revised estimate, with the estimated outlay for the coming year showing a minor uptick at 3.71%.
Looking at education spend as a share of the GDP, which is what international trackers do, the trend is clear — having dipped from 0.63% of the GDP in 2013-14 to 0.47% projected by the government for 2017-18.
Although budgeted expenditure for the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has been increased over the previous year by about 8%, this is illusory because inflation of about 5-6% would neutralise most of it.
Since 2016-17, the government has rejigged the sharing pattern of central schemes in key sectors, including secondary and higher education, with lower outlays in the Budget and more direct transfers in keeping with the 14th Finance Commission’s recommendation.
This would have marginally contributed to a decline in the total education outlay as allocation for two schemes concerning secondary and higher education — the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan and the Rashtriya Uchchtar Shiksha Abhiyan — was about 7% of the total education outlay in 2015-16, the last year before new sharing pattern.
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