Budget impetus to health, nutrition, education\\
In presenting a well-rounded Budget that reflects both the priorities and the constraints of the Modi Government, Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley has maintained a strong and definite focus on the social sector. The key areas of healthcare, sanitation, nutrition and education, which are crucial for the growth and development of the nation, have all received ample attention. In the healthcare sector, the focus is on universal access. Plans to increase the limit for foreign direct investment in health insurance to 49 per cent, set up 12 new medical colleges, and tone up the telemedicine network by extending broadband connection to rural areas, should go a long way in addressing India's pressing healthcare challenges. The Government has done well to focus on sanitation — the lack of which is a serious challenge to public health. If successful, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which aims to ensure “total sanitation” by 2019, will be a huge step forward for modern India which is still home to the largest number of people defecating in the open. Going hand-in-hand with this scheme is the National Rural Drinking Water Programme which will bring potable water to 20,000 homes over the next three years. Together, the two plans will help the Prime Minister deliver on his pre-poll promise of toilets and clean drinking water in every home. The Government's emphasis on fighting malnutrition is evident by its resolve to conduct a new survey on malnutrition. There is no updated data on nutrition, as the last National Family Health survey was done nine years ago. Malnourishment is India's silence emergency — almost half of Indian children under the age of five are malnourished, twice the number in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Education has also been given a big boost with an allocation of Rs 68,728 crore, marking an 11.1 per cent increase over the 2013-2014 revised Budget estimate. In the primary education sector, described as “one of the major priorities of the Government”, the Rs 500 crore allocated to the new teacher-training programme must be well utilised. The absence of trained teachers, coupled with poor infrastructural facilities, has meant that Government-run schools effectively function as inexpensive day-care centres for the working poor. Proof of this lies in the consistently falling standard of learning across the country. Given this backdrop, plans to start a school assessment programme and improve school infrastructure, starting with toilets and drinking water facilities at all girls' schools, are welcome. The lion's share of the education allocation has been reserved for the higher education sector which will see a slew of big ticket projects — five new IITs, IIMs and AIIMS each, a Centre for Excellence in Humanities and a sports university. But the Government must not to repeat the mistakes of the UPA regime, which too had announced a clutch of new institutes, almost all of which suffer from acute infrastructural and human resource deficiencies.