Budget 2022-23: Democratising Education through digital infrastructure
The economy grew by 9.2% in 2021-22, indicating the economy’s progress reaching or like the pre-pandemic level.
However, infrastructural investment is vital across most of the sectors, especially
in education along with the health and digital sector. The Government wants to invest USD 1.4 trillion to invest in building infrastructure, which is important for India to reach USD 5 trillion economies by 2025.
Talking specifically about education, we spend only about 3% of our budget on the education sector. In our country, nearly 50% of India’s population is under 20 years of age, so investing in the future and backbone of the country cannot be overlooked.
The budget this time was an indication of the strengthening of digital India and ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’, with the announcement of the reorientation of skilling programmes. The FM announced the launch of the Digital DESH e-portal for the skilling, upskilling & reskilling of our youth.
Besides the announcement of the development of a digital university to provide access to students for world-class quality education with ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education Standards), was an assurance to train the country’s workforce for 21st-century requirements. This will be made available in different Indian languages and ICT formats and is said to be worked out on a network hub and spoke model aligning the education system with the ISTE standards, means accepting and progressing to transform teaching and learning, to accelerate innovation and to solve tough problems in education, through the power of technology.
All said and done, we somehow failed to see the dedicated and segregated allocation of funds across different levels in education. We missed the announcement of dedicated allocation for the digital ecosystem for obtaining higher education qualifications and skilling with industrial training. As hybrid education will be the future now, democratizing education with seamless access to all, must be its focus. Hoping the budget script will be providing all these details.
Besides, permitting world-class universities to offer courses in financial services and technology, free of Indian regulations, will help youth to become powerful IT and financial management professionals, which has already become an important aspect of driving any business.
