Published Paper Details:

Abstract: - It is the constitutional obligation of the government of India to provide for equitable education facilities for the public at large. This constitutional obligation in turn necessitates incurring public expenditure to achieve the objective. The subject matter of education appears in the concurrent legislative list of the constitution. Union and State governments therefore have joint responsibility for education. Since the last three decades India has been spending around 4% of GDP on education. In the first Policy on education adopted in 1966 the recommendations of the Kothari Commission were accepted to raise spending on education up to 6% of GFP. This target adopted in the first education policy has however not been actualised until now even though the country has promulgated two more education policies since then in 1986 and 2020. The new education policy 2020 also envisages spending 6% of GDP on education. This study is concerned with the magnitude of public expenditure incurred on education both by central and state governments under revenue and capital heads. We find that revenue expenditure on education has consistently been more than the capital expenditure which implies that governments have been spending less on development of educational infrastructure. We also find that Central Government expenditure on education has been less than that incurred by various state governments.