“A National Digital Library for children and adolescents will be set up for facilitating the availability of quality books across geographies, languages, genres and levels, and device agnostic accessibility,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the Budget speech. Photo: Special Arrangement

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed a national digital library for children and adolescents along with strengthening of the National Book Trust, for building a “culture of reading” and to make up for pandemic-time learning losses.

“A National Digital Library for children and adolescents will be set up for facilitating the availability of quality books across geographies, languages, genres and levels, and device agnostic accessibility,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the Budget speech.

She said the States would also be encouraged to set up physical libraries at panchayat and ward levels, and provide infrastructure for accessing the National Digital Library resources.

The Minister added that the National Book Trust, Children’s Book Trust and other sources would be encouraged to provide and replenish non-curricular titles in regional languages as well as English, which could be used by the brick and mortar libraries set up by the States.

The latest Annual Status of Education Report 2022 conducted by NGO Pratham showed that children’s basic literacy following schools closures during COVID-19 had taken a big hit, with their reading ability as compared to numeracy skills worsening and dropping to pre-2012 levels.

The Minister also spoke of collaborating with NGOs that worked towards promoting literacy to achieve the objectives.

She said that financial sector regulators and organisations would also be encouraged to provide age-appropriate reading material for the libraries to inculcate financial literacy.

Budgetary allocation

As far as the budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Education was concerned, it had seen a total increase of 8.2% from ₹1,04,277 crore to ₹1,12,898 crore, out of which school education saw a rise in allocation of 8.4% and higher education a rise of 7.9%.

The increase in Budget for school education was almost entirely due to the PM SHRI scheme which received ₹4,000 crore. The scheme was announced in September 2022 to turn 14,500 existing schools into model schools for the implementation of the National Education Policy, 2022. The scheme has a total project cost of ₹27, 360 crore for five years between 2022 to 2023 and 2026 to 2027, with the Centre’s share at ₹18,128 crore. Schools would be selected only if their State government agreed to implement the NEP “in entirety with the Centre laying down commitments”. Last fiscal, the scheme received ₹1,800 crore.

Another notable hike under school education was for Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan where the allocation went up from ₹7,650 crore to ₹8,363 crore— an increase of 9%.

The PM POSHAN scheme, earlier known as the Mid-Day meals scheme, increased by 13.35% from ₹10,233 crore to ₹11,600 crore, which was however, lower than the revised estimate of the last fiscal of ₹12,800 crore. The scheme provides one hot-cooked meal to children in pre-primary or Bal Vatikas up to Grade 8.

The Samagra Shiksha scheme, which covers pre-primary to higher secondary grades, saw a negligible increase of 0.18% at ₹37,453 crore as it continued to be dogged by under-utilisation of funds allocation. Though it was granted ₹37,383 crore in last year’s budget, under the revised budget the amount fell to ₹ 32,151— or 14% of the funds remaining unutilised.

Under higher education, the allocation for the University Grants Commission went from ₹4,900 crore to ₹5,360 crore. The support for the Central Universities increased by ₹2,262 crore at ₹11,252 crore, and IITs rose by ₹1,246 crore to a total of ₹8,791 crore. Grants to the National Institute of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Engineering Science and Technology received an increased grant by ₹585 crore.

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