New Delhi: Child rights NGO CRY has said that the Union Budget 2019-2020 has not prioritised the considerations of children, their rights and aspirations, highlighting the marginal increase in provision for children.
The budget “is strongly focused on building the Indian economy and taking it to its pinnacle”, yet maintains the status quo on provisions for children, the NGO said. The increment to total budget for children was 0.05% compared to the last year, from 3.24 percent (of budget estimates) to 3.29 percent. “This is showing a continuous declining trend of the last 2-3 years with the allocations at Rs. 91644.29 crores in comparison to 2018-19’s allocation figures of Rs. 79090 crores allocated for children,” CRY said in a statement.
Percentage of allocations to children as part of the Union Budget. Source: CRY
The child rights group said that while the Economic Survey highlighted the work underway to improve the prospects of children, the allocations do not match these ambitions. Programmes such as Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, or reviewing the technical progress in monitoring anganwadis require more allocations, the group said. “Clearly, much more could have been done for children,” the statement says.
The statement says that only a few schemes, such as the Intergrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, or Aanganwadi services, the mid-day meal scheme for children, and child protection services, have witnessed significant change. The ICDS scheme and Poshan Abhiyan have received significantly higher allocations, the group said. While allocations to the former were hiked from Rs 16,334.88 crore in the 2018-19 Budget to Rs 19,427.75 in the present one, Poshan Abhiyan’s current allocation of Rs 3400 crore is a “substantial increase” from last year’s sum of Rs 2,928.7 crore.
Provisions to child protection, “in a climate of overwhelming security concerns”, has seen a moderate increase to reach 2.11% of the entire budget for children, the statement says.
Last year’s budget announced the consolidation of the school education system under the Samagra Shiksha scheme. This year, the scheme was allocated Rs 36,322 crore, which CRY said, “is expected to hold the perspective shift [a holistic approach to education] of considering the complete school cycle”, i.e. from pre-primary education to Class XII.
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The Union Budget was criticised for shortfall in allocation to the Sarva Shisksha Abhiyan and the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiska Abhiyan. In the 2018-19 Budget, the allocation was Rs 30,341.81 crore, “significantly lower than what was demanded”, CRY said. “This year, Samagra Shiksha Scheme with an allocation of Rs 36322 crore would still fall short of the current education requirements,” says the statement.
With the Centre keen on pushing forward the proposed New Education Policy and its “perspective shift”, the group said allocations for addressing the requirements to ensure children study from pre-school to secondary education should have to be “substantially higher”. It adds, “Higher education institutions have raced ahead while India’s school system, probably the world’s largest, has not seen the paradigm shift even though hopes of finally having a New Education Policy continue to glimmer.”
The group also criticised a decline in the “overall budget envelope for child health” to 3.51%.
“The preceding years’ budget envelope has remained stagnant – even 2016-17 revised estimates indicated an overall allocation of 3.29%,” the statement notes.