In a bid to place India on the global arena, an amount of Rs400 crore has been provided in Budget 2019 to create world class educationalinstitutions. This is more than three times the revised estimates for theprevious year.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her budgetspeech that the government will bring in a New National Education Policy totransform India’s higher education system to one of the best in the world.
She highlighted that while there was not a single Indianinstitution in the top 200 in the world university rankings five years back,there were three now – two IITs and IISc Bengaluru.
“This has been achieved due to concerted efforts by theinstitutions to boost their standards and also project their credentialsbetter,” she said.
The new policy, presently in the draft form, proposes majorchanges in both school and higher education among others, better governancesystems and brings greater focus on research and innovation.
To achieve the objectives of research and innovation, theMinister announced setting up of a National Research Foundation (NRF) to fund,coordinate and promote research.
NRF will ensure that the overall research eco-system in thecountry was strengthened with focus on identified thrust areas relevant toIndia’s national priorities and towards basic science without duplication ofeffort and expenditure, she said.
The Minister announced a programme ‘Study in India’ thatwill focus on bringing foreign students to study “in our highereducational institutions”.
She also announced that a draft legislation for setting up aHigher Education Commission of India (HECI) will be presented in the yearahead.
This would help to comprehensively reform the regulatorysystem of higher education to promote greater autonomy and focus on betteracademic outcomes.
In a bid to popularise sports at all levels, the Khelo Indiascheme will be expanded to provide all necessary financial support. A NationalSports Education Board for development of sportspersons will be set up, shesaid.