Budget 2022: Amend RTE Act, support online learning, cut taxes, says private sectors

NEW DELHI: Private players in the education sector and publishers are expecting funds to improve access to online education, data protection, student scholarships and GST cuts. They also hope to see tax exemption from COVID-19-related expenses in the Union Budget 2022 that finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman will announce on February 1.

Sonali Khan, managing director at Sesame Workshop India, said she hopes the government increases the education budget which saw steep cuts last year. Khan said the government should amend the Right to Education Act 2009 to bring children aged three to six within its purview. Currently, the RTE supports elementary education for children aged six to 14, or Classes 1 to 8.

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PC Chhabra, executive director of Sanskriti University is expecting a 10% increase in the budget allocation for education compared to the last year’s. He also suggested making 5G devices available at an affordable cost to support online learning.“If the government can provide subsidized access to laptops for students and teachers it can boost the quality of online education”, he said.

Education loans, tax cuts

According to Sourabh Gupta, founder and design dean of The Design Village (TDV) Noida, budget 2022 should aim at the retention of students in the education system. “The finance ministry along with state governments should look at initiatives that will further help students whose families have been affected with scholarships and flexible and low-interest education loans”, he said.

He further said that he expects the budget to support digital education, ed-tech and start-ups.

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Monica Malhotra Kandhari, MD, MBD group urged the government to reduce GST for publishers, especially regarding the printing of books to 5% and to abandon the reverse charge on royalty payments to authors. She also requested the government to provide subsidies on digital learning devices such as tablets and laptops to help students and teachers. “The upcoming budget should make COVID-19-related expenditure fully tax-deductible this year, as many private companies have had huge COVID-19-related expenses over the past year in the form of employee pay-outs, CSR expenditure, etc.,” she further said.