Between Making It Happen And Letting It Happen

Cicero a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar and Academic Skeptic, many eons back, had said “A budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt”. Are there lessons to be learnt from his wisdom in the just announced budget?

Since the time every conceivable activity was disrupted by the Covid pandemic, thousands of jobs have been lost and businesses have collapsed. GDP contracted like never before. Any budget presented in its aftermath would have been fraught with dangers. That the budget presented, did boost the people sentiment and expectations is credit to the government. 

A major boost to health and wellbeing was called for. That a 137% increase in budget allocation for the launch of PM Aatmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana and Mission Poshan 2.0, allocation of INR 35000 Cr for COVID-19 vaccines was made is welcome recognition that health indeed is wealth. 

An infrastructure boost through private and public investment, setting up textile parks, fishing hubs and financial services hubs can trigger new job opportunities. However, massive automation in these sectors is imperative to compete with global players. Will that limit the opportunities, time will tell. Support to MSMEs was every economist’s recommendation. Doubling allocation to INR 157 billion can mitigate their woes a little. Increasing the FDI limit in the Insurance sector can have mixed results both on health and premiums. Recognizing one person companies to be set up is a great idea and allowing women in all categories of jobs and skills is a recognition that both men and women are equal. 

Setting up an asset reconstruction and an asset management company to take over stressed assets of banks, setting up a Development Finance Institution to finance infrastructure projects and equity infusion of INR 200 billion for public sector banks can address bad loans and improve cash/credit flow. Several reforms also have been spelt out for improving ease of doing business like the conciliatory mechanism for quick resolution of contractual disputes, adoption of e-courts, decriminalising Limited Liability Partnership Act, and increasing the threshold for tax audit from INR 5 Cr to INR 10 Cr. All welcome initiatives indeed. 

Where will the money come from, for all the good things announced? The disinvestment plan set to raise Rs 2.1 lakh crore must succeed, gross tax revenue budgeted to rise by 12% must actually happen and the revenue from Telecom sector must be realised at a time when the telecom companies are financially stretched. 

The budget must be read with the three mini budgets announced in 2020. All the reliefs happened then. All the spending will happen in the current budget. Though the budget’s long-term perspective seems good, the short-term measures which could have made a difference to the sliding GDP for six consecutive quarters seem completely absent. The feeble tax exemptions announced are neither here nor there.

Though there are several welcome initiatives, what is most intriguing is an almost negligible provision made for the education sector, save setting up a central university in Leh or setting up a national research fund (NRF) of Rs. 50,000 Cr over five years, that will amalgamate all research grants currently given by various ministries independent of each other. How the Rs. 10,000 Cr available per annum is distributed amongst a host of institutions for research or how thin it will spread are matters of detailing.

The NEP detailed the multipoint entry, exit and credit bank concepts. This was a great opportunity to put systems in place that would realise the 50 GER vision. Is it possible to do this by building more brick-and-mortar units? Aspirational supply chain seeks better educated and skilled personnel. COVID-19 pushed every one online in its wake. Was this not the time to make a provision for setting up a virtual university with a centre in each district? 51% of courses that are conducted worldwide are eitherhybrid or blended. To be successful students need to learn more than just the subject. Blended learning can help support and reinforce crucial skills for them like collaboration, problem solving, and critical thinking. That the budget has not given credence is a matter of concern, what with our 850 universities and 45000 institutions in no position to make the requisite IT infrastructure investments. 

The great digital divide should have been addressed by adequately subsidising laptops, smart phones, webcams headsets and microphones.A new department of content Management or (DOCM) under the Ministry of Education should have been created. The necessary state of art technology/recording centres could have been established in each of the District headquarters to provide the technology support. Such content when ported on a common LMS like Moodle, suitably customised and maintained by the DOCM could beam all content even addressing the digital divide. Sanitised mobile vans with PC’s and smart devices and access points to all remote locations would have been the carriers of the VU. For a maximum throughput and minimal interference required for conduct of nationwide teaching or conducting examinations, VU could have functioned on channels 1, 6, and 11 in the 2.4 GHz ISM Band. DTH Channels, Cable TV Network are all vehicles of equity. DOCM could have even aggregated third-party content like that of EdX, Coursera or Udemy or similar, in various disciplines, and ported them on a common LMS. Cost to student would have been minimal. There is nothing in the budget for Skills or promotion of skills. At a time when India could become the skills capital, we have chosen to side step. A great thrust on ‘Make in India’ paradigm so essential for ‘atmanirbharata’ succeeds only if it connects innovative education.

For long, we have hypnotised ourselves into imagining that this is how things have been running and will continue to! This was the time our schools and colleges should have shifted to online teaching. Our students to online learning. The VU would have enabled us to do it. It’s simple; the teachers now at their own homes, record their lessons on video and send it to the students on WhatsApp. That also prepares a digital library of content for the schools and colleges. The students could visit that content several times rather than over a single limited period in the class. This is the paradigm waiting to blow conch unless we want to ignore the war cry of COVID! That the budget missed it is even more painful.