Budget 2023 | FM proposes National Digital Library to promote reading

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the budget speech, “A National Digital Library for Children and Adolescents will be set up, which will facilitate the availability and device agnostic accessibility of quality books across geographies, languages, genres and levels.” Photo: Special Arrangement

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed a national digital library for children and adolescents along with strengthening the National Book Trust to build a “reading culture” and make up for the loss of learning in times of the pandemic.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the budget speech, “A National Digital Library for Children and Adolescents will be set up, which will facilitate the availability and device agnostic accessibility of quality books across geographies, languages, genres and levels.”

He said that states would be encouraged to set up physical libraries at panchayat and ward levels and would be provided with infrastructure to access National Digital Library resources.

The Minister said that National Book Trust, Children’s Book Trust and other sources will be encouraged to provide and replenish non-curricular titles in regional languages ​​as well as English, which can be used by brick and mortar libraries set up by states can be done.

The latest Annual Education Report 2022, conducted by NGO Pratham, showed that children’s basic literacy took a major hit following the closure of schools during COVID-19, as their numeracy skills deteriorated and their reading abilities returned to pre-2012 levels. There was a bigger fall than the fall till.

The minister also talked about collaborating with NGOs working towards promoting literacy to achieve the objectives.

He added that financial sector regulators and organizations would also be encouraged to provide age-appropriate reading material for libraries to enhance financial literacy.

budgetary allocation

As far as the budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Education is concerned, an overall increase of 8.2% from Rs 1,04,277 crore to Rs 1,12,898 crore, of which school education saw an increase of 8.4% and 7.9% growth in higher education.

The increase in the budget for school education was almost entirely due to the PM Shree scheme, which received ₹4,000 crore. The plan was announced in September 2022 to convert 14,500 existing schools into model schools for the implementation of the National Education Policy, 2022. The total project cost of the scheme is Rs 27,360 crore for five years between 2022 to 2023 and 2026 to 2027. ₹18,128 crore with the Centre’s share. The schools will be selected only if their state governments agree to implement the NEP “in full with the Centre’s commitments”. The scheme had received Rs 1,800 crore in the last financial year.

Another notable increase under school education was for the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, where the allocation increased from ₹7,650 crore to ₹8,363 crore—an increase of 9%.

The PM Poshan scheme, earlier known as the mid-day meal scheme, grew by 13.35% to ₹11,600 crore from ₹10,233 crore, which was lower than the revised estimate of ₹12,800 crore for the previous fiscal. The scheme provides one hot cooked meal to children in pre-primary or bal vatikas up to class 8.

The Samagra Shiksha Yojana, which covers pre-primary to higher secondary grades, saw a negligible increase of 0.18% to ₹37,453 crore as it continued to suffer under-utilisation of funds allocation. While it was given Rs 37,383 crore in last year’s budget, the amount has come down to Rs 32,151 under the revised budget – or 14% of the funds left unutilised.

Under higher education, allocation for University Grants Commission increased from ₹4,900 crore to ₹5,360 crore. Support to central universities increased by ₹2,262 crore to ₹11,252 crore, and to IITs by ₹1,246 crore to a total of ₹8,791 crore. National Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Engineering Science and Technology received an increased grant of ₹585 crore in grants.