Assam Budget: Education gets biggest slice of pie

The first state Budget of the newly-formed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Assam has put a lot of emphasis on education, allocating a third of its funds to the sector. Presenting the Budget in the state Assembly on Tuesday, Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced the setting up of three more medical colleges, three new universities, 21 new polytechnics, an All India Institute of Ayurveda, and a South Asian Study Centre at Gauhati University, all of which were promised in the BJP’s 2016-2025 vision document released in March.

By 2017, 17,000 teachers who have qualified under Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) will be hired. The government has also said it will provide textbooks free of cost to students of Class IX and X from the next academic year, and allocated Rs 1,000 lakh to the Srimanta Sankardev University over a period of three years.

Given the funds allocated in its very first Budget, the government has begun on a determined note. However, it will not be an easy task to bring Assam’s education system on a par with the best in the country and stop people from migrating to greener pastures.