Nothing educative and healthy in the union budget

New Delhi: Finance minister P. Chidambaram’s Budget 2008 boosts education spending by 20%, but critics say it’s not enough and claim the lone new initiative — to launch 6,000 model schools — is elitist.

The government put Rs 650 crore behind the model schools, which was announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in August.

Overall, education spending went up to Rs 34,400 crore from Rs 28,674 in the last budget, which itself had been a 34% increase over the previous year.

“Rather than the provision of a fully equipped and functional school in every village, the government has reinforced that education continues to be planned as a privilege rather than a fundamental right,” complains Lysa John, campaign coordinator for Wada Na Todo Abhiyan, an anti-poverty network.

Agreed Madhav Chavan, who heads the non-profit education organisation, Pratham: “You can take an existing school and make it a model school with certain standards of achievement and expenditure, or build a new school. How to do the model will be a problem.”

Days before the Budget, the Planning Commission and the ministry of human resource development, which oversees education, sparred on precisely the same issue. In the end, it appears that Chidambaram backed the Prime Minister’s plan though little details emerged on a prototype.

The Budget increased two flagship programmes financed by a cess on all taxpayers — the universal primary education programme, or Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, received Rs 13,100 crore, 23% more than last year; and the mid-day meal scheme saw a 9% increase to Rs 8,000 crore.

While the government was expected to expand universal education to cover secondary education, Chidambaram did not announce a formal plan. He increased the spending on keeping 15- and 16-year-olds in school by 20% to Rs 4,554 crore.

The Budget document also talked of a “universal access and quality” at the secondary stage plan, “being launched this year”.

Shantha Sinha, director of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, lauded the increase in secondary education, but “would expect a larger increase”. She said the amount should reflect the intense demand for secondary education.

Not a healthy dose

The allocation for the health sector in Budget 2008-09 has gone up by 15 per cent — from Rs 15,291 crore last year to Rs 16,534 crore. But figures can be deceptive. The fact is that the government has failed to keep its promise of increasing the outlay for the health sector to 2% to 3% of the GDP.

At present, the government’s expenditure on the sector is only about 1%. The total expenditure in 2006-07 was 0.98% of the GDP — of which 0.29% was the Union government’s share and the rest was that of the states.

In 2007-08, the total health expenditure was 0.99% of the GDP of which 0.32% was contributed by the central government.

In the present Budget, the Centre’s share has increased to 0.34% while it should have been at least 1% of the GDP to reach the promised level of 2% to 3%.

“The expenditure on health has remained static at around 0.99% of the GDP since 2005-06,” said Indranil from the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability.

The proposed allocation of Rs 12,050 crore for the Nation Rural Health Mission shows only 11.4% increase over the last year.

“This is a departure from the government’s commitment to increase this allocation by 30% every year,” he said. Dr C.M. Gulhati, editor of the Monthy Index of Medical Specialties, said the actual increase in health budget comes to be very low after accounting for inflation of about 4% and an overall increase in national income by 9%.

For many years, India has been investing less than 1% of its national income on health. “India is the lowest health-financing country in Asia.

Countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia spend better than us,” said Alok Mukhopadhya of the Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI). Low health spending by India has invited criticism from international experts also.

According to Dr Jeffrey D Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the government should at least invest between 3% and 5% of its national income on health.

Experts say the increased allocation could turn out to be insignificant if governance and management are not improved. They feel the Budget will only benefit the private sector.

Incentives like five-year tax holiday for hospitals for going to rural areas would only add to profitability of the private sector, says Gulhati. Mukhopadhya says the government should focus on reviving the public sector healthcare.

A new Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana will be launched in Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan. Every worker in the unorganised sector in the BPL category and his family would get a health cover of Rs 30,000 under the scheme.

Mukhopadhya said without appropriate monitoring, the scheme would not have any impact. “These are uneducated and underprivileged people. How will they avail this service? The government should have instead improved public health services,” Gulhati said.