The major understated casualty of the massive damage caused by the globally rampaging Coronavirus pandemic are India’s 500 million youngest citizens in 0-24 age group. But the recently presented Budget 2021-22 has provided no relief for the world’s largest and most high-potential child and youth population – Dilip Thakore Unsurprisingly, the prime objective and focus of the Union Budget 2021-22 presented to Parliament and the nation on February 1 by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman — the first pandemic year budget of the BJP/NDA government — was to get the economy back on track and re-fire the engines of industry and commerce. Although it seems so long ago, only 11 months have elapsed since a national emergency was declared to prevent the rapid spread of the Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 pandemic that originated in Wuhan (China) in November 2019. On March 25, 2020 a total lockdown of industry, business, public transport services and all education institutions nationwide was declared by the Central government in New Delhi. “Honourable Speaker, preparation of this Budget was undertaken in circumstances like never before. We knew of calamities that have affected a country or region within a country, but what we have endured with Covid-19 through 2020 is sui generis. When I presented Budget 2020-21, we could not have imagined that the global economy, already in the throes of a slowdown, would be pushed into an unprecedented contraction,” said Sitharaman presenting her third budget after she was unexpectedly transferred from the Union defence to the finance ministry in 2019. Unquestionably, the damage caused by the highly contagious pandemic has been enormous. Thus far (February 25), this rampaging virus has infected 111 million people worldwide and caused 2.4 million fatalities. In India, it has infected 11 million and prompted an estimated 157,000 fatalities. Following detection of the first cases in India last February, in an urgent national broadcast at 8 p.m on March 24, prime minister Narendra Modi declared a national lockdown from the midnight of March 24, reportedly the most stringent pandemic-induced lockdown of any democracy worldwide. The short four hours notice given to the public provoked the largest exodus of suddenly unemployed rural migrants — their number variously estimated at 20-25 million — on foot and private transport (because all public transportation was discontinued from the midnight of March 24) since the partition of British-ruled India into the independent nations of India and Pakistan in 1947. Against this backdrop of national turmoil, a major under-stated casualty are 21st century India’s 500 million youngest citizens in the 0-24 age group — the world’s largest national cohort of children and youth. The total outlay of the Central government for public education budgeted at Rs.93,224 crore for 2021-22 is 6.13 percent less than the Rs.99,312 crore budgeted for 2020-21. And the consensus within the academic community is that Budget 2021-22 has comprehensively ignored the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the outcome of hard slog of two high-powered committees — T.S.R. Subramanian (2016) and Dr. K. Kasturirangan (2018) — which…
