While discussing the The Central Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2019 in Rajya sabha on 16th July 2019, communist MP K.K.Ragesh raised some significant issues that could endanger the public funded institutes and quality of education of India.
Video Courtesy: Rajyasabha TV
While he welcomed the idea of establishing two universities in the state of Andhra Pradesh, he showed extreme concern for the Central Government’s dependency on private or foreign funded universities instead of strengthening the Government universities of the country.
He spoke about the budgetary allocation for higher education that has been drastically reduced from 4.1% of total budget expenditure in 2014-15 to 3.17% in 2018.
Speaking about the annual CAG reports, he said that 94000 crores collected from the 3% annual Education Cess, has been lying unspent and that too, at a time when the universities are going through a major lack of funds and the quality of education is deteriorating.
He argued that while the central Government promised to allocate 6% of the GDP on education, in their manifesto, it didn’t translate into reality.