Rajasthan budget gives 1% less to education sector compared to last year

JAIPUR: Chief minister Ashok Gehlot’s first full-fledged budget has been projected as one that focused on education but the figures say otherwise.
Budgetary allocation on education sector has recorded less than 1% growth which is lowest in the last several years.
Data says that budgetary allocation of Rs 40,017.45 crore under the segment of education, sports, art and culture comes around 17.73% of the total budget for 2020-21.
The previous year allocation in the same segment was Rs 40,014.09 crore which constituted for about 18.34% of the total budget presented in 2019-20. The exact rise of budget is dismal less than 1% than the previous year. The highest budgetary allocation of 19% was made in 2009-10. The poor rise in the education budget comes in sharp contradiction with the new education policy draft which suggests to double the education budget in the next five years.
Raising concerns over the dismal budgetary allocation, Damodar Goyal, educationist says, “The rise of 0.1% budgetary allocation than the previous year will make it impossible for the state to meet the series of announcement made by them since they assumed power. How they will meet the additional cost of 50,000 teachers to be recruited, mostly this year, new schools and colleges, infrastructure, payments made against the Right to Education Act (RTE).”
State has opened 47 new colleges in the last academic year which are running in the makeshift campuses requires huge funding for its construction. Gehlot focussed his budgetary speech on seven resolutions including quality of education. Nesar Ahmed of Budget Analysis Rajasthan Centre Trust expressed that projection of slow economic growth with availability of less funds in the coming financial year will put a restriction on the government to introduce new programs and initiatives. “Even in the outgoing financial year, the state has yet to spend close to Rs 4000 crores due to different reasons, primarily being less funds from the centre and poor revenue generation from its own sources,” said Ahmed.
Forecasting the implications of the budget, KB Kothari, former policy planned UNICEF, New York says, “With this budget, the state is not likely to spend anything other than meeting the salaries of its staff in the segment—education, sports, arts and culture. Quality of education has always been a concern but I don’t see any scope for investing funds for teachers training, investing funds on developing new teaching pedagogies or
Reports say that Rajasthan spends close to 89% of its budget on salaries of its teachers, which is among the highest in the country while 2% of the grants on learning and teaching material which is among the lowest in the country.