Education not hot in state govt’s scheme of things

MUMBAI: Forget ‘sex education’, a morally self-righteous Maharashtra government doesn’t have enough funds even for education ‘without sex’. Early this week, the Maharashtra government announced a ban on sex education in schools to protect students from “bad influence”.

But the Democratic Front (DF) government’s spend on school education over the years betrays its “commitment” to raise the state’s education standards. From 2000-01 to 2005-06, the size of Maharashtra’s budget has increased by 54%. But the spend on education sector during this period has gone up only by 15%, points out Samarthan, an NGO monitoring the state’s finances.

Worse still, the share of allocation for education in the plan outlay has actually gone down in seven years. It was 3.28 % of the plan outlay in 2000-01. In the 2007-08 plan, allocation for education is 2.75%. A greater irony is that a mere 2 % to 3% allocation for education is a far cry from the DF’s common minimum programme (CMP) commitment of earmarking at least 7% of the state’s receipts for school education.

The commitment was given in 1999 when the DF came to power. Not one annual plan since the DF came to power has honoured this commitment. Of every Rs 100 planned, the DF, on an average, has spent just about Rs 2 to Rs 3 on school education.

The size of net state budget in 2000-01 was Rs 47,102 crore and the share of the education sector in it was 16.48 %. This ratio of allocation to education sector to the overall state budget shows a steep decline since then even as the size of state economy has been growing. It was 15.39% in 2001-02 and the current fiscal’s provision for education sector is only 12.44% of the state budget.

The DF has defaulted even on its assurance to allocate at least 7% of the state’s revenue for education. The CMP had gone a step further and promised that of this 7% allocation, at least 75% would be used for primary education on priority. In 2000-01, education got a meagre 3.71 % share in the revenue and it has actually been going down since then.

Even the non-plan expenditure on education has come down during seven years of DF rule. It was 18.12% of the entire non-plan expenditure but the current fiscal’s projection is only 15%.

The DF performance on other related indicators of the health of school education sector has also been below par. The state has around 7 lakh child labourers who need schooling, more than 6,000 schools have only one teacher, and schools in the state are short of more than 60,000 class rooms.

abhiram.ghadyalpatil@timesgroup.com