Union Budget 2022: Demand for Financial Boost to Higher Education, Digitization of Rural India

Some of the unfulfilled promises of Budget 2021 include the creation of HECI, an umbrella structure in nine cities to facilitate better cooperation between research institutes.

It has been two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdown phases, the education sector was one of the worst-hit sectors in 2020, however, it was also one of those sectors which moved ahead during these phases with schools, colleges and universities adopting digital education and evaluation.

Next week, the Modi government will be presenting Union Budget 2022, and the education sector is expecting a booster dose to further strengthen the sector. One of the demands that have been on the rise in the past two years is that digital infrastructure needs a boost in the rural part of the country. In Budget 2021-22, the Education Ministry was allocated Rs 93,224 Crore. The Department of School Education and Literacy was allocated Rs 54,874 crore, accounting for 59% of the Ministry’s total allocation. The Department of Higher Education was allocated Rs 38,351 crore, accounting for 41% of the Ministry’s total allocation.

Budget 2021: HECI, Co-ordination between institutions

Some of the key recommendations of the Budget 2021 were the formulation of the Higher Education Commission of India as an umbrella body with four separate bodies for standard-setting, accreditation, regulation, and funding, however, there has been no movement on the ground towards its creation.

Another important announcement was the creation of an umbrella structure in nine cities each to facilitate better cooperation between various research institutes, universities, and colleges under the central government. A central university in Leh for better accessibility to higher education in the region.

Budget 2022: Skill enhancement, boost to sector

Dr Yajulu Medury, Vice-Chancellor, Mahindra University talking about his expectations from the Union Budget 2022: “During the years 2021 & 2022, we all witnessed disruptions due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic. Two consecutive years that had yielded low growth and high unemployability, which could be highly demoralizing for any economy, especially one that was growing at a furious pace.

The Finance Minister has work ahead cut out for her. She has to allocate resources to ensure that the economy stabilizes and gets back on to the growth engine. In addition, she needs to focus on the social aspects as well, since the pandemic has significantly pushed down the employment and incomes across the country.

“I’m hoping that this year will witness a sizeable outlay in increasing employability of people of the country in the changed pandemic scenario. In addition to healthcare, which needs to be focused on in a big way, I am of the opinion that the education sector needs a significant boost since it will be the driver for growth in the years to come. The focus on skill enhancement programs as well as reskilling the workforce will need to be continued aggressively if we wish to expect success in the near future,” Medury said.

In the last few years, there has been a lowering of budgetary allocation to education and it is time and important that this gets corrected. He hoped that the FM will not just add to the fledgeling education budget but also ensure optimal, time-bound usage of the allocated resources. He said: “I also hope that the reforms presented in NEP 2020 finally see the light of the day and sufficient budget is allocated to the central and state governments/institutions to make this a reality. In addition, I hope that the Government ensures that the budget allocated to Research in the higher education category is fully utilized.”

Support to private sector, digitization of rural India

The education sector is also expecting Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget announcement to incentivise the public and private sectors to better their e-infrastructure, e.g. optical fibre connectivity and sufficient transmission bandwidth to enable seamless delivery of education across the country.

This is imperative since many students in the rural and semi-urban areas were not able to access educational content at will due to the inadequate IT infrastructure currently in place. It is also important to explore modalities required for offering loans/grants for the purchase of digital products by organizations and individuals alike so that education does not suffer.

Investing in creative skills right from the primary education sector to higher education and professional training, will result in widespread innovation and in turn, a boost to our economy. The value of design skills cannot be overemphasized in fueling the growth engine of the economy. But for this to happen the Government should focus on forming a “mission” of embedding these skills across the nation and this can only be done by providing a much-needed fillip to design education in the country, said Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Vice-Chancellor, World University of Design.

A Metaverse is being imagined and created, opening a completely new universe of opportunities for game designers, producers, storytellers, data providers, analysts, spatial mappers, public health and safety experts besides teachers, coaches and leaders. The art and design world of the future would be making full use of present and future, augmented and virtual reality technologies.

Gupta further said: “The Government, as it finalizes the Union Budget, will do well to remember that the designers of today are the innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow, and it would do well to invest in this intrepid breed of dreamers if we are to achieve our collective dream of a $5 trillion economy.”

No one had expected the pandemic to continue for as long as it has done and along with India Inc. the education sector has suffered too. Those involved in imparting skills and education, particularly in the creative field, have had to meet unprecedented challenges. Classroom education was disrupted, replaced by online teaching in the early days of the Covid outbreak and eventually turned into a combination of online and offline learning. The online and hybrid mode of education has put immense financial stress on higher education institutions (HEIs), and more so on students in tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

Dr Rajat Kathuria, Dean, School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR on Economic Policy said: “The overwhelming focus of budget 2023 should be on job creation in the economy. The pandemic that has been raging since 2020 has made the bad situation with respect to jobs much worse. We are significantly below the pre-pandemic level of jobs as revealed in recent survey data. The employment to population ratio is below pre-pandemic levels and at the State level too jobs have been lost, especially in the informal sector. The reverse migration process of 2020 demonstrates acutely that job creation should be priority number one for the government.”

In 2021-22, the highest expenditure (33%) was allocated towards Samagra Shiksha (Rs 31,050 crore), followed by: (i) autonomous bodies (12%) such as Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS), (ii) Mid-Day Meal Programme (12%), (iii) grants to central universities (8%), (iv) Indian Institutes of Technology (8%), and (v) statutory and regulatory bodies (University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)) (5%), among others.

The higher education sector expecting more funding to support research and infrastructure creation.

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