In what may transform the higher education system in the country, the Education Ministry has been allocated the highest ever Rs 112899.47 crore in the Budget 2023. Due to this rise, the budgetary allocation for higher education has also gone up at Rs 44,094.62 crore compared to Rs 40,828.35 crore in 2022-23. As per the budget, 100 labs for developing apps using 5G services will be set up in higher educational institutions to realise a new range of opportunities, business models and employment potential.
The labs will cover among others, apps like Smart Classrooms, Precision Farming, Intelligent Transport Systems, and Healthcare. These 100 labs will provide a fillip to employment, start-ups, businesses and promote innovation and entrepreneurship in young engineers. Recognising the pioneer role of the IITs in research excellence in the country, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget speech announced that a research and development grant for indigenous production of Lab Grown Diamond seeds and machines will be given to one of the IITs for five years.
This will ensure an industry led research and innovation effort, with direct impact on exports, employment generation and India’s share in the world trade in this sector. According to the Ministry of Education in order to implement the National Education Policy 2020 in the true spirit, the best institutions and universities of the country, under the central government, have been given an additional Rs 4235.74 crore, which is an increase of 12.8 per cent over their allocation last year.
In 2023-24, the grant for the University Grants Commission (UGC) was increased by 9.37 per cent — an increase of Rs 459 crore. The grants to Central universities have been increased by 17.66 per cent, deemed universities by 27 per cent, support to IITs has been increased by 14 percent, and to NITs by 10.5 percent as compared to 2022-23. Also the grant for IISC, Bangalore has been increased by 15 per cent. In 2023-24, for the Prime Minister Research Fellowship (PMRF) an amount of Rs 400 crore has been provided as compared to Rs 200 crore in 2022-23 — that is a 100 per cent increase.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has an important role to play in agriculture, health, automobiles, cyber security, smart home, city infrastructure, data analysis, speech recognition, customer service, machine translation, digital personal assistance etc. The Ministry of Education said that three Centres of Excellence will be set up in educational institutions to “Make AI in India and Make AI work for India”. Further, by introducing courses in emerging sectors and making the approach multidisciplinary in engineering institutions across the country, the government has been attempting to transform engineering education.
As per the budget, the allocation for the education sector is close to Rs 44,000 crore, which is around 4,000 crore more than the previous year. It will be helpful in implementing the national education policy in higher education. The budgetary recommendations will also promote digitisation in the education sector and show a futuristic approach towards teaching and learning to make world class quality education available to all students.
