Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is all set to present the Union Budget 2022-23 tomorrow. Experts from across industries have been spelling out their expectations from tomorrow’s budget. Sakshi Post spoke to Dr Yajulu Medury, the VC of Mahindra University to share a few insights into what the education section is expecting from the Union Budget 2022-23, Here’s what he had to say.

“During the years 2021 & 2022, we all witnessed disruptions due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic. Two consecutive years that had yielded low growth and high unemployability, which could be highly demoralizing for any economy, especially one that was growing at a furious pace,” Dr. Yajulu Medury, Vice Chancellor, Mahindra University, said.

The Finance Minister has work ahead cut out for her. She has to allocate resources to ensure that the economy stabilizes and gets back on to the growth engine. In addition, she needs to focus on the social aspects as well, since the pandemic has significantly pushed down the employment and incomes across the country, he added.

“I’m hoping that this year will witness a sizeable outlay in increasing employability of people of the country in the changed pandemic scenario. In addition to healthcare, which needs to be focused on in a big way, I am of the opinion that education sector needs a significant boost, since it will be the driver for growth in the years to come. The focus on skill enhancement programs as well as reskilling the workforce will need to be continued aggressively, if we wish to expect success in the near-future,” said Dr Medury.

In the last few years, there has been lowering of budgetary allocation to education and it is time and important that this gets corrected.

The VC of Mahindra University said, I hope the FM will not just add to the fledgeling education budget but also ensure optimal, time bound usage of the allocated resources. I also hope that the reforms presented in NEP 2020 finally see the light of the day and sufficient budget is allocated to the central and state governments / institutions to make this a reality. In addition, I hope that the Government ensures that the budget allocated to Research in the higher education category is fully utilized.

I also wish that the Government incentivises the public and private sectors to better their e-infrastructure, e.g. optical fiber connectivity and sufficient transmission bandwidth to enable seamless delivery of education across the country. This is imperative since many students in the rural and semi-urban areas were not able to access educational contents at will due to the inadequate IT infrastructure currently in place. It is also important to explore modalities required for offering loans/grants for purchase of digital products by organizations and individuals alike so that education does not suffer, he added.