Hyderabad: Voicing concern over dipping
budgetary allocation of state governments towards education, the Minister of State for HRD has said the imbalance is proving to be a major hindrance in achieving a provisional
target of six per cent of the GDP for this sector.
"Until some time ago, the allocations made by the
Central and state governments stood at 80 and 20 per cent
respectively. We see in the recent years the allocation from
the Central government has been going up. On the other hand,
the allocation made by the state governments towards education
has declined," D Purandeswari said.
She said the Ministry would appeal to the state
governments that even if they cannot increase the allocation,
they at least retain the same levels to strike the balance to
achieve the six per cent GDP goal.
Currently, the budgetary allocations for education are
pegged at 3.8 per cent of the GDP. In the 2011-12 Union Budget
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee allocated Rs 52,057 crore
for education (which constitutes a little over one per cent of
the GDP), up 24 per cent over previous year.
Speaking on Higher Education, Purandeswari said though
the number of IITs IIMs and IIITs have increased, some of
them are partly running in temporary locations.
Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had earlier said that
eight new IITs that were permitted to come up in 2008 in
various states do not have the necessary infrastructure and
are not up to the mark making it difficult for the country`s
premier institutions to retain talented faculty.
Sibal had blamed the state governments for not allotting
required land for setting up permanent campuses for these
institutes.
Replying to a question, Purandeswari said they are in
constant touch with the state governments on this issue.
"There are some issues to be sorted out. In case of
Shillong IIM, it is a problem with the terrain. We have called
for tenders for construction work," Purandeswari told.
PTI
