FM may raise allocation for health and education

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is on Friday expected to present a social sector reform budget with higher allocations for health, education and skill development, besides a total sanitation programme.

Updated on: Mar 16, 2012, 02:35:55 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee is on Friday expected to present a social sector reform budget with higher allocations for health, education and skill development, besides a total sanitation programme.

A-caricature-of-finance-minsiter-Pranab-Mukherjee-by-Shreyas-Navare

Budget-2012 is likely to have a plan size of Rs 5,21,000 crore - an 18 % increase - and will set into motion the social sector reform agenda of the UPA government in the first financial year of the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17).

A senior Planning Commission functionary said Mukherjee's budget would ensure that every paisa spent on the social sector is monitored, and has a measurable outcome.

The UPA government has almost doubled the allocation for its flagship school education scheme - the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan - in the last six years, and the budget for the health sector witnessed 73 % increase in allocation.

The total allocation for these sectors was over Rs 1,00,000 crore during the period.

Although enrolment in primary schools is around 99%, student learning levels are still very low, and about one-third of the students drop out after the primary level. Hence, the budget would present a gradual shift in these two sectors. Sources said the 12th Plan would ensure higher emphasis on quality in school education, and provision of trained manpower for the health sector.

The budget for world's biggest social security scheme - the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Scheme -may witness a decline in funding to provide for 'toilets with bathing facility' to all households. As per the Census data released on Tuesday, 50% Indian homes do not have a latrine.

Another area that Mukherjee is expected to address is the challenge of the demographic dividend, with the average age of the Indian likely to be 29 years by 2020. The government plans to ensure skill development for 8.5 crore youngsters in the next five years, and build around 6,500 training centres for the purpose.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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