Root cause of ailing education unearthed
Source: Hueiyen News Service

Imphal, April 23 2013: Even though the Union Government has given strict instructions on giving more emphasis in development of Agriculture and Education sectors along with allocating more funds in the budget, the Government of Manipur has not done the needful, and as a result, human resource development in the State is still at the lowest rung.

It has come to light during an inspection visit of the Hueiyen-Reach-Out team to take stock of the existing school education scenario in far flung areas of the State.

From the information gathered by the Hueiyen-Reach-Out team, it has been known that a mere Rs 742.45 crores was earmarked for education sector in the budget demand number-10 of the last fiscal year of the State Government.

From this earmarked amount, a sum of Rs 579.02 crores was put under the non-plan head, another Rs 76.47 crores as planned while the remaining Rs 66.96 crores was to come from Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS)/CPS.

The sectoral allocation of the combined Higher Education, School Education and Technical Education was Rs 96.47 crores, and out of this total amount, Rs 76.87 crores was meant for School Education; Rs 15 crores for Higher Education and another Rs 3 crores for Technical Education.

So, in the last fiscal year, the share of the School Education was just 2.76 percent of the total plan size.

Moreover, even though the amount allocated for School Education was Rs 76.87 crores, a sum of Rs 58.88 crores had been sanctioned under the Centrally Sponsored Schemes of SSA, MDS, CIT, etc.

After deducting the amount for grant-in-aid educational institutions, scholarships, incentives, school meets and expenditures on Model Schools, a mere amount of Rs 1.74 crores was actually left for the school education.

With the Chief Minister, who also holds the portfolio of Finance, earmarking a huge amount of fund for MDS (Rs 35 crores of the annual plan amount)while comparing to the amount earmarked for education sector as a whole, it is clear indication that the Government of Manipur is still short of acknowledging the importance of education in today's world.

Even in Tripura, 20 percent of the total budget is allocated for education sector.

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