Union Budget 2022: How the India's social sector gets short shrift

Government allocations on health and education do not meet its targets and consistently fall short in terms of actual spending

The government has set ambitious targets for education and health spending but the allocations by the finance minister for 2022-23 in the Budget do not come close to the targets. The new education policy released two years ago had envisaged an allocation of six per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to education (combining both the Centre and states’ spending). A Business Standard analysis shows that the Centre’s education expenditure as a percentage of GDP has declined since 2014-15.

Even though the government has allocated as much as Rs 1 trillion for education expenditure for 2022-23, as a per cent