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Expressing concern over dipping budgetary allocation of state governments towards education, the Minister of State for HRD, Ms D. Purandeshwari, has said that this is proving to be a major hindrance in achieving the total provision target of six per cent of the GDP in this sector.
“Until some time ago, the allocations made by the Central and state governments stood at 80 and 20 per cent, respectively. We see in the recent years the allocation from the Central government has been going up. On the other hand, unfortunately the allocation made by the state governments towards education has declined,” Ms Purandeswari said.
She said the Ministry would appeal to the state governments that even if they cannot increase the allocation, they at least retain the same levels to strike the balance to achieve the six per cent GDP goal.
Currently, the budgetary allocations for education are pegged at 3.8 per cent of the GDP. In the 2011-12 Union Budget, the Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, allocated Rs 52,057 crore for education (which constitutes a little over one percent of the GDP), up 24 per cent over the previous year.
Speaking on Higher Education, Ms Purandeswari said though the number of IITs IIMs and IIITs have increased, some of them are partly running in temporary locations.
The Union HRD Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, had earlier said that eight new IITs that were permitted to come up in 2008 in various states, do not have the necessary infrastructure and are not up to the mark making it difficult for the country’s premier institutions to retain talented faculty.
Mr Sibal had blamed the state governments for not allotting required land for setting up permanent campuses for these institutes.
Replying to a question, Ms Purandeswari said they are in constant touch with the state governments on this issue. “There are some issues to be sorted out. In the case of Shillong IIM, it is a problem with the terrain. We have called for tenders for construction work,” Ms Purandeswari told PTI.
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