Education gets push in Union Budget with new IITs, IIMs - Livemint

The finance minister pegged an allocation of Rs.28,635 crore for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the main vehicle for implementing the Right to Education. Photo: Pradeep Gaur/Mint

New Delhi: The Union Budget presented on Thursday gives a massive push to education—cutting across ministries and streams—with plans to start several more Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

“The country needs a large number of centres of higher learning which are world class,” finance minister Arun Jaitley said in his Budget speech, controverting the 12th Five Year Plan document that had advocated a halt to government-funded educational institutes.

He proposed to set up five more IITs in the Jammu, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala and five IIMs in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Odisha and Maharashtra.

The 10 planned schools were allocated an initial sum of Rs.500 crore for the current fiscal year.

Once completed, India will have a total of 18 IIMs and 21 IITs. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had set up seven new IIMs and eight new IITs between 2008 and 2011, but most of these new institutes are operating from makeshift campuses and are faced with tough challenges in terms of their quality of teaching and research.

The government also proposed to set up a Jai Prakash Narayan National Centre for Excellence in Humanities in Madhya Pradesh and open five new All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), and a sports university.

The finance minister described elementary education as “one of the major priorities of the government” and pegged an allocation of Rs.28,635 crore for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the main vehicle for implementing the Right to Education (RTE). In the 2013-14 budget estimate, the previous government had allocated Rs.27,258 for SSA.

The RTE guarantees education to all children in the six-to-14 age group.

The Budget also advocated starting a school assessment programme and aimed to infuse new training tools and motivate teachers through another scheme called the Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya New Teachers Training Programme. Jaitley allocated Rs.500 crore toward this initiative. The lack of trained teachers is considered a hurdle in improving schools and education outcomes.

The budget allocated Rs.4,966 crore for the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), a programme to universalise secondary education. In the 2013-14 budget estimate, RMSA had been allocated Rs.3,983 crore.

The finance minister pointed to a residual gap in minimal school infrastructure facilities. Therefore the government would provide toilets and drinking water in all the girls’ schools to begin with. Besides, the Union Budget also sought to give a push to technology integration in education and promotion of virtual classroom.

On skills development, Jaitley announced the establishment of a multi-skill programme called Skill India. It would give young people the skills needed to find jobs and start their own businesses.

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