If for little else, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of Delhi state, led by former social activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal, has to be credited with moving education to the top of its development agenda. For three consecutive years since 2015 — when it was unexpectedly swept to power routing the Bharatiya Janata Party fresh from its General Election 2014 triumph — the AAP government has been allocating a rising share (Rs.9,836 crore in 2015 and Rs.10,600 crore in 2016) of the state’s annual budgetary expenditure to education. This year as well, deputy chief, finance and education minister Manish Sisodia, presenting the 2017-18 budget, announced an allocation of Rs.11,300 crore for education (including Rs.1,114 crore on the capital account) — equivalent to 23.5 percent of the total Rs.48,000 crore budget of the state government. Major highlights of AAP’s education budget for 2017-18 are: establishment of libraries in 400 government secondary schools and a special library for each classroom of primaries (Rs.417 crore); setting up ten early childhood education centres for children in the two-six years age group (Rs.4 crore); introduction of pre-primary education in 156 government schools; and plans to promote five Schools of Excellence with English as the medium of instruction. In his March 8 budget presentation speech, Sisodia also announced setting up of two new District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) to add to the nine currently, and a high quality Teacher Training Institute affiliated with the city’s Ambedkar University to address the crisis of chronic teacher shortage. Currently, there are over 26,000 teacher vacancies in 1,977 municipal and state government schools with the average teacher-pupil ratio nearing 1:80. But with the AAP administration, despite its good intentions, unable to deliver its promises of the past two years, monitors of the national capital region’s education scene are losing faith. “While the AAP government needs to be lauded for prioritising education in its budgets, policy formulation and implementation is very unsatisfactory. For instance, instead of promoting new playgroup and pre-primary schools, it should have expanded and improved Delhi’s cash-starved anganwadis. Also, certain initiatives such as distributing electronic tablets is an unnecessary expenditure. The money could have been used elsewhere,” says Ambarish Rai, convenor of the Delhi-based RTE Forum, a network of 10,000 civil society groups working on effective implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Rai’s charge of inefficient and misplaced expenditure is not unwarranted. Many promises for education upliftment made in AAP’s first budget of 2015 remain unfulfilled. It promised 500 new greenfield schools which are still on the drawing board, because land has not been purchased/leased yet. Construction of 8,000 classrooms has been vigorously advertised by the government as its great achievement. But most of these classrooms are without teachers, given that there are 26,000 teacher vacancies in state government schools. No new college has been established in Delhi despite AAP’s election manifesto promise, and even its commitment of enabling 28 fully and partially aided colleges with wi-fi connectivity remains…
