BackStates may have to spend more on key school schemes
Govt considering redesigning funding framework for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Mid Day Meal Scheme and Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan
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New Delhi: Three of India’s flagship education programmes that are at the heart of the country’s efforts to increase school enrolment and advance higher education may be undermined by a proposal by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government to increase the states’ share of spending on them.
The government is considering redesigning the funding framework for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA, or education for all programme), the Mid Day Meal Scheme, which is commonly shortened as MDM, and the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA, national higher education mission), which underpin the education system in a country where 220 million children go to school and 29 million students are enrolled in colleges and universities.
Initial discussions on the proposal have already taken place, according to three government officials familiar with the development who spoke on condition of anonymity. The plan is for the states to bear 50% of the cost of implementing SSA and MDM and underwrite at least 60% of the cost of RUSA, one of the three officials said.
Currently, the centre bears 65% of the cost of SSA and RUSA and contributes 75% of the cost of providing mid-day meals to school children.
In the budget presented by finance minister Arun Jaitley on 28 February, the government sharply cut the allocations for the programmes in a likely prelude to the proposal. SSA was allocated ₹ 22,000 crore in fiscal year 2015-16, nearly ₹ 6,000 crore less than last year; MDM scheme received ₹ 9,236.4 crore, a cut of around ₹ 4,000 crore. The government earmarked ₹ 1,155 crore for RUSA, about ₹ 1,000 crore less.
The proposal follows the recommendations of the Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) that the centre would share 42% of its net tax revenue with states as untied funds during the five-year period starting 2015-16, up from the previous 32%. The move allowed greater fiscal policy space to states, even at the cost of leaving less revenue for the centre’s own schemes and programmes.
After the government accepted the commission’s recommendations, the human resource development ministry (HRD) has been weighing its likely impact on key educational programmes, said a second official.
The 2015-16 budget scrapped an HRD ministry scheme to build 6,000 model schools across India, including 2,500 in partnership with private entities, and the HRD ministry was expecting a cut in central funding for education programme like the SSA, the third official said.
“Reducing fund flow to key education schemes will be counter-productive as schemes like SSA and MDM are mass-impact programmes," this person added. “States have not shown enough interest in such schemes, leading to poor implementation, and if you reduce fund flow further, such schemes may not make the impact the country would like to have."
Backers of the proposal may argue that in the backdrop of the higher devolution of funds to the states, it was only right that they should pay more for funding the schemes, but such programmes need “more hand-holding from Delhi than from state capitals", the third official said.
SSA is aimed at universalizing elementary school education and is the main vehicle for implementing the Right to Education Act. MDM scheme aims to arrest hunger among children in government elementary schools and reduce the dropout rate for students. RUSA was launched in 2013 to improve the quality of higher education at the state level by providing dedicated funds.
So-called special category states, including Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and the north-eastern states, receive a higher share of central funding for the three programmes. They now bear only 10% of the expenditure, with the centre contributing the rest.
The Centre is weighing three different proposals on funding the programmes in such states —bring them at par with the rest of the states, reduce central funding marginally to 80% or leave the current framework as it is, given that these states are small, have fewer facilities and are located in rugged geographies, the three officials said.
To be sure, it isn’t the first time that the centre has proposed a cut in central funding for educational programmes. Four years ago, a proposal for the central and state governments to share the burden of financing the SSA equally fell through after resistance from the states.
This time too, state education ministers, who are part of the Central Advisory Board on Education, the apex policy advisory body of the HRD ministry, may not accept the proposal.
The third official cited above said the goal of universalizing elementary education is still a work in progress, given that India still hasn’t put in place the physical infrastructure required to achieve the target.
“States cannot say we will not implement these key education programmes but the implementation will become chaotic and patchy," warned N.C. Saxena, a member of the National Advisory Council under the previous United Progressive Alliance government.
States such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh may find it tough to devote extra funds given their huge population of children, and paying the salaries of staff involved in the SSA and MDM scheme may become an issue, Saxena said. The upshot would be poor implementation and an adverse impact on learning outcomes, he said.
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