New Delhi: With the Supreme Court bringing all recognized schools under the Right to Education (RTE) Act,the government will have to boost spending on its flagship programme to meet the estimated Rs 2.3 lakh crore needed to fund the initiative over 2010-2014.
RTE has been plagued with fund shortfalls with budgetary provision in the last two years being only half of what was estimated.The HRD ministry received Rs 21,000 crore in 2011-12 instead of Rs 43,903 crore.The allocation has gone up only marginally to Rs 25,000 crore in the current 2012-13 budget.
The estimated Rs 2.3 lakh crore,to be shared between Centre and states according to a 65:35 ratio,is also expected to go up as it does not include subsidy the government is to pay private schools to implement a 25% quota for economically disadvantaged students.
RTE incorporates the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the ministry had estimated it would need an allocation of Rs 48,000 crore in the current fiscal.Initially,the government had calculated it would need Rs 40,500 crore in the first year of implementation.
According to educationist Vinod Raina,a key member of the RTE team,RTE in general suffers from a financial crunch and there has also been a problem of states not being able to spend the funds allocated.There have also been constraints of teacher shortages.
The RTE rollout has been hampered by a resource crunch and infrastructure bottlenecks,for which the government has not always been to blame.
MEGA ROLLOUT
RTE spending budgeted over 2010-2014 Total RTE bill put at 2.31 lakh cr;share of Centre and states in ratio of 65:35 Total RTE bill almost 5 times Indias allocation for school education ( 48,781cr) in Budget 2012-13 It is more than Indias total annual subsidies of 1.9 lakh crore It is also larger than Indias estimated income tax receipts of 1.96 lakh cr in 2012-13
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