Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a slew of measures during her speech for Budget 2023.
While it’s yet to be seen how the announcements will unfold, India’s education and edtech space have shared their views on what they might entail for the future of the country.
Here’s what experts have to say on Budget 2023, its wins, losses, and more:
“The National Digital Library for children, initiated by the honourable Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, is a testament to the government's commitment to modernising and advancing the economy. An ed-tech commitment was one area in which the budget lacked our expectations.” - Prateek Maheshwari, Co-Founder, PhysicsWallah.
“One urgent reform the education system needs is to address the digital divide. The budget, unfortunately, doesn’t emphasise it much. The budget speech has ignored another recurrent demand from the education sector, which is to remove or at least reduce GST on education services.” - Pranay Aggarwal, Sociology faculty, IAS Gurukul.
“With the increased digital transformation of sectors utilising AI, Robotics, IoT, drone tech, the skilling of lakhs of youth through the Pradhan Mantri Kausal Vikas Yojana 4.0 would significantly open up job opportunities and catalyse growth across industries such as finance, telecommunications, healthcare, manufacturing, and e-commerce, among others.” - Krishna Kumar, CEO, Learnbay.
“The plan to set up 30 Skill India International Centers highlights the importance of skill development. These centres would also increase their chances of finding employment opportunities abroad.” - Rishabh Khanna, Founder & CEO of Suraasa.
“The Union Budget has missed yet another opportunity in addressing the growing inequality in the country. The allocation for key social sector spending like health and education continued to remain abysmally low in the Union Budget.” - Amitabh Behar, CEO, Oxfam India.
“Foundational literacy and access to education provided through skilled teachers have been highlighted as a priority in the NEP 2020, for India to effectively prepare its growing young population for the future.” - Alison Barrett MBE, Director India, British Council.
"The government's focus on teacher training and recruiting 38,000 teachers for Eklavya Model Residential Schools truly hits the mark in helping the rural regions that were immensely impacted by the pandemic." - Aniket Palav, Business Head, Let's Eduvate
"The announcement of hiring 38,800 teachers and support staff for the 740 Eklavya Model Residential Schools, which will serve 3.5 lakh tribal students, is significant as it will be critical for these teachers to have digital and other new-age skills in order to properly equip these students for a bright future and reach out to children and youth in the tribal areas. This is significant for the nation’s growth." - Dr Neerja Birla, Founder and Chairperson, Aditya Birla Education Trust.
