Experts are of the opinion that partial increase in expenditure in this year’s union budget on health and education is far short of expectations. If India has to achieve universal education and provide affordable health facilities to all its citizens, much more is needed to be done.
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.
