On Wednesday, February 1, India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her 5th Union Budget and the last full budget of the Modi 2.0 government that came to power in 2019. The Finance Minister made a slew of announcements, from raising the personal income tax limit from Rs 5 lakhs to Rs 7 lakhs to a steep increase of 33 per cent in the capital investment outlay to Rs 10,00,000 crores.
The Minority Affairs Ministry is allocated Rs 3097.60 crore in the 2023-24 Union Budget on Wednesday, which is Rs 484.94 crore more than the revised figures of the previous fiscal.
In the budget presented for 2023-24 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the Centre proposed to allot Rs 3,097.60 crore to the Ministry of Minority Affairs.
The budget estimate for the Ministry of Minority Affairs in the financial year 2022-23 was Rs 5,020.50 crore and later the revised allocation was Rs 2,612.66 crore.
Of the proposed allocation to the Ministry, Rs 433 crore is for the pre-matric scholarship scheme and Rs 1,065 crore is for the post-matric scholarship.
A total of Rs 540 crore has been allocated for Pradhan Mantri Virasat Ka Samvardhan (PM VIKAS), a skilling initiative from MoMA focussing on the skilling, entrepreneurship and leadership training requirements of the minority and artisan communities across the country.
The scheme is intended to be implemented in convergence with the Skill India Mission of Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship and through integration with the Skill India Portal (SIP). The scheme has components aiming to benefit approximately 9 lakh candidates the 15th Finance Commission Cycle, which includes Skilling and Training Component, Traditional Training sub-component (earlier known as USTTAD and Hamari Dharohar), Non-traditional Skilling sub-component (earlier known as Seekho aur Kamao), Leadership and Entrepreneurship Component (earlier Nai Roshni), and Education Component.
Furthermore, the Budget allocates Rs 600 crore for PMJYK (Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakaram), a special area development programme that aims to address the development, deficits in the selected Minority Concentration Areas (MCAs i.e identified districts headquarters blocks/towns/clusters of villages having substantial minority population which are relatively backward). The MsDP has been resturctured and revamped for implementation as Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakaram.
The budget earmarks Rs 10 crores to grant financial assistance to introduce modern subjects in madarsas, teacher’s Training and augmenting school infrastructure in minorities institutions. In FY 2022-2023, Rs 60 crores were allocated to ‘Education Scheme for Madrasas and Minorities’ while a year before that, the centre had spent Rs 161.53 crore on the same.
How incrementally progressive changes and the Centre’s financial prudence has the usual suspects upset
As expected, the broad changes the Minority Ministry has been instituting in the last couple of years had cheesed off the usual suspects and leftist media organisations. Two days before the announcement of the Union Budget 2023, the leftist propaganda portal Scroll published an article lamenting how the Centre had slashed the budget for minorities.
However, it is worth noting that the Centre had allocated Rs 5,000 crore for minority affairs last year, of which a large portion (~Rs 2,300 crore) remained unutilised, as per the budget figures. This year, the Centre drew lessons from their past actions and allocated Rs 3,097, about 18 per cent higher than Rs 2,612.66 crore (revised estimates) of the current fiscal year, instead of allocating greater share only to have them unutilised.
The leftist media outlet grumbled about the Centre scrapping the Nai Udaan Scheme as well as the Maulana Azad National Fellowship for higher education.
However, the restriction of Pre-Matric Scholarships to Classes 9 and 10 was due to the fact that students from Classes 1-8 are protected under the Right to Education Act, 2009, requiring the government to provide free and compulsory elementary education to all children. The notification by the Centre further said that the decision was taken to ensure parity with similar scholarships offered by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which cover students of Classes 9 and 10.
But the Scroll argued that the reasoning by the Centre did not hold scrutiny. In essence, the Scroll wanted the Centre to pay for scholarships to minority students who are anyway receiving the education for free, at taxpayers’ expense.
The author of the Scroll article also bemoans the steep decline in the grant for madarsas. From 160 crore two years ago, the Centre has, this year, earmarked only Rs 10 crore for funding Islamic schools. However, this is in line with the Indian government’s push to promote modern education for education over madarsas, which are reportedly centres propagating traditionalism parochial outlook.
