Trends in India’s Education Budgeting

The Union education budget has seen an increase in monetary allocation every year and the enrolment rate across the country has also been largely moving upwards. It becomes important to scrutinise the education budget for 2014-15 to understand how the new government has approached the education sector, especially elementary and secondary education. The military expenditure for 2014-15 as per the central budget was increased by 12 percent from the previous year to INR 229,000 crores. While the expenditure on education was 3.3 percent of the GDP in 2013-14 (compared to 9 percent of the GDP for military expenditure), the budgetary allocation has gone up by 12.3 percent to INR 83,771 crores in the 2014 budget. With 1.4 million children between the ages of 6 and 11 still out of school in India (according to the latest UNESCO Education for All Global Monitoring Report) the increase in expenditure is definitely inevitable. The expenditure on education is important not only in raising living standards but also to create a skilled workforce that can contribute to economic growth. Four major schemes undertaken by the Government of India in the education sector will be analysed based on the expenditure in the following sections. The second section of the paper will try to understand the trends in state education budgets by analysing data for three sample states—Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.