Education Budget 2023: National Digital Library to be Set up For Children, Says Sitharaman

A National Digital Library will be set up for children and adolescents for facilitating the availability of quality books across geographies, languages, genres, and levels, and device-agnostic accessibility, said finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the Union Budget 2023.

Furthermore, states will be encouraged to set up physical libraries for them at Panchayat and ward levels and provide infrastructure for accessing the National Digital Library resources, she said. National Book Trust and Children’s Book Trust will provide books in local languages as well as in English to the physical libraries, the minister added.

In the next three years, the centre will recruit 38,800 teachers and support staff for 740 Eklavaya Model Residential Schools for serving 3.5 lakh tribal students, the minister added. The government also aims to set up 30 Skill India International Centres to skill the youth for international opportunities.

As many as 157 new medical colleges will be set up. ?157 new nursing colleges will be established in colocation with the existing 157 medical colleges established since 2014,? Sitharaman added. Besides, select facilities at ICMR labs will be made available to outsiders for research. A new programme to promote research and innovation in pharmaceuticals will also be launched.

A total of 100 labs will be set up across engineering colleges to develop applications using 5G services. This will be set up with various authorities, regulators, banks, and other businesses. The labs will cover smart classrooms, precision farming, intelligent transport systems, as well as healthcare applications, the minister stated. Lab-grown diamond production to be encouraged via a grant to an IIT, she said. In her speech, Sitharaman also announced three Centres of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence to be set up in top educational institutions.

In the Union Budget last year, a total of Rs 1,04,278 crore has been allotted to the education sector. This is a rise of Rs 11,054 crore from 2021. The education budget allocation was Rs. 93,223 crores in 2021. The minister announced several programmes and initiatives to make up for the learning loss as well as to upskill employees.

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