By Shyam Krishna Kumar, Vision India Foundation Fellow

This article was published in the HuffingtonPost

The source of the image is Vision India Foundation

Given that India will have a working-age population of 869 million by 2020 and the fact that this was the first budget after the draft National Education Policy (NEP) of 2016, expectations were high that education would be a key priority. The outlay for education in this year’s budget is ₹79,686 crores, an increase of about 10%. The Finance Minister began the education section of his budget speech with a quote from Swami Vivekananda: “The education that does not help the common mass of people to equip themselves for the struggle for life …is it worth the name?” This gave a clear indication of a budgetary and governmental focus on skill-building and empowerment.