Union Budget 2023-24: Education outlay hiked 8%, PM-Poshan gets 13% more

The Samagra Shiksha scheme, which is expected to be the major driver behind reversing learning losses, has registered a nominal hike of 0.18 per cent, with allocation under it increasing from Rs 37,383 crore in 2022-23 to Rs 37,453 crore in 2023-24.

The outlay for PM-Poshan has been increased by 13.3 per cent, taking the allocation from Rs 10,233 crore in 2022-23 to Rs 11,600 crore. While no new major sector-specific scheme was announced, Sitharaman said a National Digital Library will be set up for “children and adolescents” to provide a supply of good quality books at a time students are trying to cope with the learning losses during the pandemic.

“States will be encouraged to set up physical libraries for them at panchayat and ward levels and provide infrastructure for accessing the National Digital Library resources,” Sitharaman said. Moreover, to “build a culture of reading, and to make up for pandemic-time learning loss”, the National Book Trust and the Children’s Book Trust will be encouraged to provide non-curricular titles in regional languages and English to these physical libraries, she added.

However, no funds have been allocated for the library project in the 2023-24 budget, and there was no separate allocation for the National Digital University project announced in 2022.

Incidentally, the Centre had in 2016 launched the National Digital Library (NDL) pilot project under which IIT Kharagpur runs an online repository of texts and video lectures on various subjects, ranging from humanities to sciences.

Its focus, so far, has been on making available resources to help students prepare for entrance and competitive exams. While Sitharaman did not specify if the government plans to expand the scheme, her statement that the library shall be “for children and adolescents…for facilitating availability of quality books across geographies, languages, genres and levels, and device agnostic accessibility” was an indication towards a shift.

In 2022-23, a sum of Rs 10 crore was earmarked for the project, which had received Rs 20 crore in 2021-22, Rs 12.4 crore in 2020-21, Rs 10 crore in 2019-20, Rs 10 crore each in 2018-19 and 2017-18, and Rs 5 crore in 2016-17. While total allocation for education was Rs 1.04-lakh crore in 2022-23, crossing the Rs 1-lakh crore mark for the first time, the revised estimate stands at Rs 99,881 crore.

Union Budget 2023: All you need to know

• ↗️ Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Union Budget 2023 has some big takeaways
• ↗️ First, what everyone has been looking forward to: changes in the new income tax regime. She has made the new tax regime more attractive. There are changes in the rebate limit and in tax slabs. What does this mean for the taxpayer?
• ↗️ FM Sitharaman proposed a 33% increase in capital investment outlay, raising it to Rs 10 lakh crore. This is the biggest in the past decade. What does it mean?
• ↗️ Some articles get cheaper and others get costlier due to changes in customs duty. Here is a list
• ↗️ The capital outlay for the railways has been increased to the highest ever – Rs 2.40 lakh crore. The government is trying to create more jobs
• ↗️ FM Sitharaman said the fiscal deficit will fall to 5.9% of the GDP. What does it mean for the stakeholders?
• ↗️ The FM called it the ‘first Budget of Amrit Kaal’. PM Narendra Modi said it will build a strong foundation for a developed India. What did opposition leaders say?