'Insensitive, unfortunate,' ABVP slams Finance Secretary's statement on Budget 2023's education allocation

New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) slammed remarks made by the Union Finance Secretary, TV Somanathan on allocation for education in Budget 2023 in an interview with The Hindu.

While defending the Centre's decisions in Union Budget 2023, the Finance Secretary suggested that investing more money into education will not improve India's quality of education.

"We have more teachers than we need in the teacher-to-pupil (PTR) ratio, and the child population is declining demographically. It’s not quantity in education. It is quality, whether the teacher attends the school. Does he teach well? Does he make the child do homework? Does he not just pass the child whether the child has learned or not? These are not money,"  the Finance Secretary told the newspaper.

Somanathan also called on the universities to depoliticise. "Don’t we have enough universities, Don’t we have enough vice-chancellors and are they not paid reasonably well? It’s not money, you have to depoliticise the university. Throwing money at it is a sop to the conscience of the intelligentsia that we are doing something for it," said Somanathan.

ABVP, on Friday, came out strongly against the remarks made by the Secretary in a press release. The right-wing student organisation called the statements contrary to the National Education Policy -NEP 2020 and claimed that it overlooked the issues brought into the limelight by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"The Union Finance Secretary's comments on budgetary allocation for education in his interview to the daily reflect his lack of proper understanding on matters concerning education and are highly irresponsible," the ABVP said in the release while highlighting that India's education spending still doesn't meet 6% recommendation under NEP 2020.

"Such remarks will only boost mistrust against the government in the education community, at a time when the entire country is anticipating substantial changes after the NEP," said the statement by ABVP's National General Secretary Yagyavalkya Shukla, who added that the remarks are 'unfortunate and insensitive'.