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The efforts of Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh to prevent any cut to his ministry were rewarded with a 46 per cent jump in allocation (at Rs 80,194 crore). But this increase was reflected only when compared with the revised estimate and not last year's Budget allocations.
The ministry, which had Rs 80,000 crore in the last Budget (including for rural development and land resources department) and a revised allocation of Rs 55,000 crore, was expecting drastic cuts this year. This had led Ramesh to write to the prime minister, urging any cut proposed in the allocations be reconsidered. The cuts did not happen and the allocations for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme remained the same at Rs 33,000 crore. The allocation for the Indira Awas Yojana (Rs 13,665 crore) and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (at Rs 21,000 crore) also remained constant.
However, health and education have seen a marginal increase. Health initiatives under the national rural and urban health missions have been repackaged as National Health Mission and allocated Rs 21,239 crore. According to Finance Minister P Chidambaram, this marks a 24.3 per cent increase from last year's revised estimate. But health analysts like Ravi Duggal of International Budget Partnership said the allocations which were earlier over one per cent of GDP, were now lower than that. He said universal access of medicine required Rs 5,000 crore each year but those funds were missing. "The total allocation of Rs 37,330 crore, including grants to states, is about 0.34 per cent of the GDP. I don't think state governments would contribute more than 0.6 per cent of GDP. So, we are likely to remain under one per cent of GDP for public health commitments," Duggal said. The Budget has allocated Rs 65,867 crore for education, which again is an increase of 17 per cent only over last year's revised estimate.
Both the Economic Survey and the Budget emphasise the need for creating jobs and skilled manpower, but the only reflection of this concern is seen in a pre-election monetary sop announced for young voters.
The Budget has announced a reward of Rs 10,000 to youth taking up a skill-oriented course. Though Rs 1,000 crore has been promised for this scheme, the Budget documents don't reflect it in the allocations to the National Skill Development Corporation. NSDC sources, too, said they were not aware of the scheme.
