Hyderabad: More funds sought for education, health and agriculture sectors

Hyderabad: Economists and experts in various fields expressed serious concern over declining allocations to education, health and agriculture sectors. At a discussion on Union Budget, conducted by Centre For Economic and Social Studies (CESS) here, the experts stressed the need on strengthening the social infrastructure.

The CESS founder member, J Mahendar Reddy, said that the philosophy of the Union budget was 'Good economics is good politics'. The unifying theme was to make digitally empowered India with focus on infrastructure and to promote ease of living besides growth and employment through PPP approach. It would have been better to have more spending on education, health and employment guarantee scheme and some relief to the sectors like hospitality, tourism and MSME which were badly-affected by the corona pandemic.

Reddy welcomed the Centre's proposal to set up Digital University to help improve access to higher education. "Now, online education is as good as regular education and innovative online education would also increase the employability and enhance competitiveness," he added.

The CESS Director, E Revathi, said that the less allocation to food subsidy, fertilizers and reduce in fuel subsidies would adversely affect common man as well as the farming community. She pointed out that there was no mention of urban employment scheme in the Union Budget. Agriculture expert and CESS Assistant Professor Chandrashekhar said that the agriculture and rural incomes were under stress due to several reasons. According to officials statistics, farmers average monthly income is Rs 10,218 which is quite far from the target announced for 2022 and silence on the issue in the budget seemed to suggest that the government was nowhere close to achieving that.

The allocations to farm sector declined in some of the schemes, he added. Industry experts and CESS official G Alivelu emphasised on the promotion of Research and Development (R&D) to promote manufacturing and compete China, Taiwan and other industrially developed countries. She urged the Centre to help the MSME to recover from pandemic loss under Atma Nirbhar Bharat.