New Delhi, Jan 31 : Although the Covid-19 pandemic has affected almost all social services, the health sector has by far been the worst hit.
Expenditure on health sector increased from Rs 2.73 lakh crore in 2019-20 (pre-Covid) to Rs 4.72 lakh crore in 2021-22, an increase of nearly 73 per cent, the Economic Survey 2021-22 said.
The government’s spending on social services increased significantly during the pandemic.In 2021-22 (BE), the Centre and state governments earmarked an aggregate of Rs 71.61 lakh crore for spending on the social services sector, an increase of 9.8 per cent over 2020-21.
Last year’s (2020-21) revised expenditure has also gone up by Rs 54,000 crore from the budgeted amount.
In 2021-22 (BE), funds to the sector increased to 8.6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), up from 8.3 per cent in 2020-21.
During the last five years, social services accounted for about 25 per cent of the total government expenditure (Centre and states taken together).In 2021-22 (BE), it was 26.6 per cent.
It is difficult to gauge the real time impact of repeated lockdowns on the education sector because the latest available comprehensive official data dates back to 2019-20.
This provides the longer time pre-Covid trends, but does not tell us how the trend may have been impacted by the Covid-induced restrictions.
Various smaller surveys by the government, and by citizen-led non-government agencies, such as the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021, have assessed the impact during pandemic for the education sector in rural areas.
ASER found that despite the pandemic, enrolment in the age cohort of 15-16 years continued to improve as the number of not enrolled children in this age group declined from 12.1 per cent in 2018 to 6.6 percent in 2021.
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