How much Karnataka spends on health, education, social welfare

Karnataka's Gross State Domestic Product is estimated to rise to Rs 13.26 lakh crores in 2022-23

Politics in poll-bound Karnataka is peaking with leaders across parties attacking each other in the most choicest of words. In this war of words, important issues like education and health have been pushed to the backseat. Aam Aadmi Party recently brought up the issue of poor pass percentages in colleges and schools and vowed to changed it if elected to power, a report in the New Indian Express said. BJP and Congress have also said that education will be an area of priority for both the parties.

Karnataka is among the richest states of India with its Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) estimated to rise to Rs 13.26 lakh crores in 2022-23, as per the latest economic survey data of the state.

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Being a rich state Karnataka can afford to spend more in the social sector. While in absolute terms, the allocations for health and education have consistently increased over the years, when looked at as per cent of total expenditures, spending on health, education and social welfare has remained consistent over the years. Even in an election year, the trend continued.

In this piece, we will take a look at how much Karnataka spends on education, social welfare and health and where does the state rank when compared to other states and the national average spending by all states and Union Territories on these departments.

Education

In this year’s budget, Karnataka allocated Rs 37,960 crores for education. In the budget estimate of 2022-23, the expenditure on education was Rs 31,980 crores while the estimate for the same a year before that was Rs 29,688 crores. Even though the education budget has kept increasing in absolute terms, in terms of the per cent of the total expenditure the budget has been stuck at around 12 per cent.

According to RBI data for 2022-23, on average, Indian states and Union Territories spend around 13.6 per cent of their total budget on education. That makes Karnataka a below average state in terms of spending on education.

Among large states only Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Punjab fare worse than Karnataka in these rankings.

Health

Karnataka’s health and family welfare budget estimate for the ongoing financial year is pegged at Rs 15,151 crores which is higher than previous year’s estimate of Rs 13,982 crores. In the 2021-22 budget, Karnataka had estimated a spending of Rs 11,908 crores rupees on health and family welfare.

In terms of percentage of total expenditure, the health budget of the state has also remained constant, at around 5 per cent.

The national average according to the RBI data for the percentage of total expenditure on health is around 5.7 per cent and even on this count, Karnataka stands below the national average.

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Social welfare

Karnataka’s budget for social welfare saw a big jump this year. From an estimate of Rs 9,389 crores last year, the allocation on social welfare went up to Rs 11,163 crores for this financial year.

In terms of portion of total expenditure also the budget for social welfare went up to 4 per cent this year, up from the 3 per cent which was the norm for the last few years.
According to RBI’s latest data on total social sector expenditure, Karnataka, again, is behind the national average. While the average of the total expenditure on social sector for all the states and Union territories is 42.4 per cent, the same number for Karnataka is 38.8 per cent.