Not centres of learning yet
Context:
As we come to India@75, the Anganwadi system, part of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) of the government which serves over 30 million children in the age group of 3-6 in 1.3 million centres across the country, should have been a triumph.
Criticisms:
The ICDS scheme is designed to support all children under six with their health, nutrition, and education needs — done right, this would make India a leader in the next 25 years in early childhood education and deliver our delayed demographic dividend. However, while across India over 70% of children are enrolled in Anganwadis, they are plagued by low attendance — parents simply do not perceive Anganwadi centres as centres of learning.
About Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) :
The Umbrella ICDS is a centrally sponsored scheme implemented by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. It was launched in 1975.
Major Objectives of ICDS:
- To improve the nutritional and health status of children in the age-group 0-6 years.
- To reduce the incidence of mortality, morbidity, malnutrition and school dropout.
- To achieve effective coordination of policy and implementation amongst the various departments to promote child development.
- To facilitate, educate and empower Adolescent Girls (AGs) so as to enable them to become self-reliant and aware citizens etc
Schemes Under the ICDS:
1. Anganwadi Services Scheme:
- It is a programme for early childhood care and development of 0-6 year olds. The other beneficiaries under the Scheme are pregnant women and lactating mothers.
- It provides a package of six services namely supplementary nutrition, pre-school non-formal education, nutrition & health education, immunisation, health check-up and referral services.
- Supplementary Nutrition includes Take Home Ration (THR), Hot Cooked Meal and morning snacks and holds importance for many vulnerable households as it impacts the nutritional outcome of the children.
2. Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana:
It provides cash incentive to Pregnant Women and Lactating Mother during pregnancy and lactation in response to individual fulfilling specific conditions.
3. National Creche Scheme:
It provides day care facilities to children of age group of 6 months to 6 years of working women. Children are provided with supplementary nutrition, early childcare education, and health and sleeping facilities.
4. Scheme for Adolescent Girls:
It aims at out of school girls in the age group 11-14, to empower and improve their social status through nutrition, life skills and home skills. The scheme has nutritional and non nutritional components
5. Child Protection Scheme:
It aims to contribute to the improvement and well-being of children in difficult circumstances, as well as, reduction of vulnerabilities to situations and actions that lead to abuse, neglect, exploitation, abandonment and separation of children from parents.
6. POSHAN Abhiyaan:
It targets to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia and low birth weight babies by reducing malnutrition/ under- nutrition, anaemia among young children as also, focus on adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
State of Anganwadis:
Currently, anganwadi centres (AWCs) under ICDS programme face the following problems:
Role of parents:
- Parents’ perceptions of Anganwadis are shaped by how the system views them. In ICDS reports, parents are routinely addressed as “beneficiaries” — passive recipients of ration, immunisation camps, and lately, education.
- But this is not how parents view themselves or their children. Education for them is a gateway to meeting their aspirations, and a pathway to social mobility so that their children can have opportunities they missed out on. Enrolment rates for primary school reaching over 90% are a direct consequence of the link in parents’ minds that education leads to opportunities for a better life.
Early childhood care & education (ECCE)
However, the education ecosystem, including the ECCE/ Anganwadi system, is not willing to speak parents’ language. Anganwadi systems, with the best of intentions, do not fulfil parents’ demands. The ECCE curricula for different States instead focus on local language-driven, and play-based pedagogy recommended by leading educators in India for this age group. They prescribe free and guided play-based, activity-based learning, facilitated by a skilled educator — without much thought given to how parents might perceive learning of this sort.
Attendance rates:
Low attendance in Anganwadis is a tragedy for India’s children’s development. According to experts, the ideal preschool has a skilled facilitator who ensures that children spend most of their time in free and guided play. It includes exploring and manipulating their physical environments to develop early language, early numeracy, socio-emotional, executive function, and motor skills — at a rate of neuronal activity that they will never get back once they get older.
Public vs private pre-schools:
However, by ignoring or belittling parents’ aspirations and demands (with the best of intentions), we have pushed parents to leave the Anganwadi system. They are sending their children to private preschools that are downward extensions of primary school. Here the 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children sit in neat rows, practicing joyless, rote-based learning and memorisation of letters and numbers to the exclusion of all else. Over 7 million children in India attend these age-inappropriate private preschools that focus on rote learning from the earliest ages.
Way forward:
Importance of medium of language for learning:
- To support our children best, we have to start by not patronising parents and ignoring their powerful, expressed needs for English language skills, writing, and maths. This can be done in easy ways — exposing children to the English language at an early age in an age appropriate, non-intimidating way — while recognising that the language spoken at home is the best way to reach fluency in any other language.
- Exhibiting the wonder of maths through fun activities like estimation, comparison, sorting, and seriation could help reduce the fear and paralysis of maths that gets in their way of succeeding in STEM in later years.
Daily activities:
Anganwadi centres can follow regular daily schedules that balance time spent on self-directed free play and teacher-led activities focused on developing cognitive, literacy and numeracy skills.
Parental involvement:
- They can also conduct regular Shiksha Choupals (parent – teacher meetings) to showcase the learning happening in the Anganwadi to the parent community to bolster their trust in this institution.
- Additionally, regular messages can be shared with the parents to equip them on the nature of engagement expected from them to maintain the momentum of what is learnt at school.
Mass campaigns:
From “School Chalen Hum” to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan campaign, we can change minds and behaviours with sustained action and mass campaigns. A mass campaign for awareness of age appropriate ECCE that brings parents in as stakeholders, is crucial in the next five years — our youngest children, and their developing brains, deserve no less.
Conclusion:
- As the nation celebrates the joyous occasion of India@75, Prime Minister has iterated that the spirit of Azaadi ka Amrit Mahotsav is establishing ‘jan-bhagidari’ (participation of citizenry) for activating India 2.0.
- In the ECCE ecosystem, we need to embrace the power of ‘abhibhavaak-bhagidari’ (participation of parents) to activate Anganwadi 2.0.
A Centre- State skew further widened
Context:
- Recently, some Chief Ministers expressed their concern about dwindling State revenues in a NITI Aayog meeting chaired by the Prime Minister.
- They sought a higher share in the divisible pool of taxes and an extension of GST compensation, both of which have long remained a bone of contention between the Union government and the States.
States’ financial health:
- States’ financial health had taken a turn for the worse with the implementation of the Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY), farm loan waivers, as also the slowdown in growth in 2019 20. Heightened expenses during the pandemic and a revenue shortfall further strained their finances.
- It is in this context that it becomes important to understand who raises the revenue and who carries the bulk of expenditure.
Division of financial powers and responsibilities:
- The Constitution grants the Union government more revenue raising powers while the States are tasked to undertake most of the development and welfare related responsibilities.
- According to the 15th Finance Commission’s report, in FY19, the Union government raised 62.7% of the total resources raised by the Union government and States, while States had borne 62.4% of the aggregate expenditure.
- This allocation of taxation powers and expenditure responsibilities results in an imbalance, and hence the Constitution provides for sharing of the Union government’s revenue with the States.
Finance commission recommendations :
- Successive Finance Commissions (FC) have attempted to reduce the imbalance by increasing the States’ share in Central taxes. Although the 14th and 15th FC raised the share of States in gross taxes to over 40%, the actual share never reached this mandated level.
- After reaching a peak of 36.6% in FY19, States’ share fell and has since stagnated at around 29%. At the same time, the gap between the share recommended by the FC and the actual devolution has widened to more than 11 percentage points, the highest in at least two decades.
- So, even though FC raised the States’ share in Central taxes, it didn’t translate into an increase in the actual share devolved as the divisible pool shrank. This can be explained by illustrating the revenue sharing during the pandemic.
Revenue sharing during COVID 19 pandemic:
As the gross tax revenues took a hit during the pandemic, the States’ share of the Union government’s taxes recorded a steep fall of 15% and 9% in FY20 and FY21, respectively. But, the Union government’s share continued to rise. This is because the Centre beefed up its revenue by levying cesses and surcharges which are not shareable with the States.
Cess and surcharge:
| A cess is a tax on tax in simple terms.For example, the Indian Government collects a cess on education and utilises it specifically for that purpose alone, that is, education. Moreover, this cess applies to all taxpayers. Proceeds of cess go to the Consolidated Fund of India but the centre does not share it with the states. It is vital to note that a cess must be applicable for that purpose alone for which it is charged. Surcharge aims to tax high earning individuals. For example, a surcharge of 10% on the income tax rate of 30% raises the tax burden to 33%. Surcharge is calculated on the total tax amount only.Unlike cess, surcharge can be used for any reason. |
Recent trends in cess and surcharge:
- In the past few years, the share of cesses and surcharges in gross tax revenue has risen significantly. From 10.4% in FY12, their share climbed up to 20% by FY21, suggesting the Union government’s excessive reliance on these instruments to raise revenue.
- While the surge in cess/surcharge revenue, largely through duties on fuel, has swelled the Union government’s coffers, this has also shrunk the divisible pool of resources.
- Various cesses and charges are imposed by the government to raise resources. They are transferred to Reserve Funds to ensure that they are being used for the intended purpose.
- Worryingly, in FY20, about 40% of the cesses levied — worth ₹78,000 crore — were not transferred to the Reserve Funds. Between FY10 and FY20, ₹1.28 lakh crore was collected as a cess on crude oil. However, not a single penny was transferred to the Oil Industry Development Board (OIDB).
Other sources of finance for states:
Distribution Of Non-tax Revenues:
- The Centre – receipts from Posts & telegraphs, Banking Railways, Broadcasting, Coinage & currency, Escheat & lapse.
- The States – receipts from Irrigation, Forests, Fisheries, State PSE, Escheat & lapse Grant-in-aids process
Grant-in-aids From The Centre:
- In addition to the distribution of taxes between the Center and the states, there are other provisions in the Constitution that regulate the scope for Grants-in-aid.
- In accordance with Article 275 and 282, Parliament may provide grants-in-aid from the Consolidation Fund of India to such states as they needed assistance, especially to improve the welfare of the tribal areas, including a special grant to Assam.
Statutory Grants
Discretionary Grants
In accordance with Article 282, the Center may, at its discretion, provide assistance to certain states for public purposes. These Grants are optional, not compulsory in nature.
Other Grants:
Grants Recommended by Finance Commission-
- FC determines how income is distributed between the Center and the States.
- In addition, the Commission also determines the principles for grants-in-aids to states.
- But recently FC recommendations are being criticised for becoming more politicised. Also, central government is not implementing to the full extent the recommendations of FC, like the vertical devolution recommendation of 42%.
GST Regime and its impact on federal financial relations:
- Goods and Services Tax (GST) is an indirect tax introduced in 2017, and applied throughout India, replacing the tiered taxes levied by the central government and the state.
- According to the GST, goods and services are taxed at the following rates: 0%, 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%. (Multiple tax rate slabs)
- GST is classified as CGST, SGST, or IGST depending on whether the transaction is for intrastate or interstate delivery.
- The GST has taken away much of the autonomy available to states and has made the country’s indirect tax regime unitary in nature.
- Now the state governments lost their independent taxation powers.
- Liquor and fuel are the only two significant avenues left for states to generate their own tax revenues, without having to seek approval from the Union government, since they are outside the GST regime.
- India’s GST is precariously held together by the loose thread of “compensation guarantee”, under which states surrendered their fiscal powers in return for guaranteed revenues.
- However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Union government repeatedly violated the compensation guarantees to the States under the GST regime. Delay in paying the States their due worsened the impact of the economic slowdown.
- The GST compensation period expires in June 2022, and despite multiple requests from the States, the deadline has not been extended.
Way Forward
- A Reformed Approach toward States: The Centre could strive to be more conciliatory towards States’ concerns and fiscal dilemmas.
- The GST Council should also meet more often to nurture the critical fiscal federalism dialogue in the right direction and minimize trust deficits.
- There are many pending reforms that require the Centre to work more cohesively with States to take India’s economy forward and lift those left behind – land, labor markets as well as the agrarian sector.
- Horizontal and Vertical Level Cooperation: Cooperation between the Centre and states is required at both vertical (between Centre and states) and horizontal (among states) levels and on various fronts. This includes fine-tuning of developmental measures for desired outcomes, development-related policy decisions, welfare measures, administrative reforms, strategic decisions, etc.
- Reforms in GST Council: It may be time already for reform of the GST. What is needed is statesmanship at the GST Council even if the Court has said that the Council is a place as much for political contestation as for co-operative federalism. The Council should transcend political rivalries of the day. The States should have the right to dissent in the Council and their voice should not be drowned in the pursuit of unanimity in decision-making.
- Centre should extend more grants to state, especially more generic grants which are not conditional, so that states can utilise them as per their needs.
- Centre should implement FC Recommendations, especially devolving entire amount of states’ share from the divisible pool of taxes.
- Centre should rationalise the imposition and amount of cess.
Conclusion:
Both centre and states should take equal share in financial powers as well as responsibilities. Then we will see the true manifestation of cooperative federalism in financial sphere.
