The 2025-26 state budget was presented by CM Siddaramaiah on 7th March. Overall it was a pro-corporate budget under the garb of stated pro-people policies most of which suffered budget cuts. A total projected budgetary layout of Rs 4,08,647 crore was declared. Here a few points pertaining to the education sector have been highlighted:
- Compared to the previous Budget, the 2025-26 one presented by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday cut allocation for education by 2%. In 2024-25, he allocated 12% in the Budget to the sector and now it has come down to 10%. The total allocation this year is ₹45,286 crore. Karnataka already fares badly when it comes to expenditure in education as a percentage of GDP. It was only 1.45% for 2024-25.
- In this budget, only ₹419 crore was allocated for subsidy and financial assistance, which was ₹481 crore last year. While students are struggling with late disbursal of inadequate scholarships, such a step will affect them negatively.
- The existing scheme of providing eggs/bananas to 53 lakh students six days a week will continue, with funding of ₹1,500 crore from the Azim Premji Foundation. The government has also extended the ragi health mix with hot milk supplied to schoolchildren by Shri Sathya Sai Annapoorna Trust from three days to five days. The government will spend only ₹25 crore for the ₹100 crore initiative. This shows how the government is allowing private players to enter into the education sector and retreating from its own responsibilities.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) based ‘Kalika Deepa’ programme in collaboration with Ek-Step Foundation will be available in 2,000 schools to teach basic English, Maths, and Kannada. I-Code Labs will be set up in collaboration with Agasthya Foundation to introduce coding for students of government schools. This is a misstep as students require trained teachers in school for foundational learning.
- The government has allowed direct investment by the World Bank in bettering first grade colleges across the state, set up centres of excellence, and enhance research capabilities in the existing institutes. This Rs. 2,500 crore project will be implemented with support from an imperialist institution like the World Bank.
- The Chief Minister has announced 500 new Karnataka Public Schools (KPSes) at a cost of ₹2,500 crore with assistance from the Asian Development Bank, another imperialist institute.
- Quality of education in Higher Education Institutes has been a long-standing concern. Rather than direct government investment in better faculty recruitment and training, a partnership with Azim Premji Foundation is underway to conduct faculty training for a period of three years. In Karnataka, 412 government colleges are running without principals. Half the faculty positions are lying vacant in state government engineering colleges. A total of 59,772 teachers’ posts remain vacant in Karnataka’s government schools. Of these, 50,067 vacancies are in primary schools, while 9,705 are in high schools. Additionally, 6,158 schools are managed by just one teacher. The condition of hostels is also terrible.
To summarise, the Karnataka state government led by Congress is reducing funding towards education by handing it over to private enterprises and imperialist banks following the ‘public-philanthropic-partnership’ model of the National Education Policy, 2020, despite having scrapped it formally. Lastly, it is ironic that a Prof. Nanjundaswamy chair is being initiated in Mysuru university while the spirit of the entire budget goes against the anti-globalisation struggles led by him.
