Aditi Tandon
New Delhi, January 31
Most social development indicators have recouped from the impact of the Covid pandemic riding on the back of high government spending on social services and the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on poverty alleviation by 2030 looks achievable, the Economic Survey tabled in Parliament said on Tuesday.
Social sector recovering
Years 2020 and 2021, peak years of the pandemic, tested the strength of the country’s social and health infrastructureFY23 has been a year of rejuvenation for the sector that has weathered the storm of the pandemic and come out strongerVarious dimensions of the social sector are recouping the lost ground
The social sector expenditure outlay of the Centre and state governments has increased steadily to stand at Rs 21.3 lakh crore in FY23 (Budget Estimates) with its share in total general government expenditure standing at 26.6 per cent. This expenditure, the survey notes, has kept pace with growing importance of the sector.
In welcome trends, the government’s spending on social services has shown a rising trend since FY16. The share of expenditure on social services in the total expenditure of the government was around 25 per cent from FY18 to FY20 and rose to 26.6 per cent in FY23 (BE). Importantly, the share of expenditure on health in the total expenditure on social services has increased from 21 per cent in FY19 to 26 per cent in FY23 (BE).
In line with the National Health Policy 2017 goal of raising government’s health expenditure from the existing 1.2 per cent to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2025, the survey notes that Central and state governments’ combined budgeted expenditure on the health sector reached 2.1 per cent of GDP in FY23 (BE) and 2.2 per cent in FY22 (Revised Estimates) against 1.6 per cent in FY21. As a percentage of the GDP, government spending on the social sector has steadily risen from 6.6 per cent in 2015-16 to 8.3 per cent in 2022-23 BE.
On poverty, the survey points to UNDP’s 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index covering 111 developing countries and says, “The findings suggest that in India, 41.5 crore people exited poverty between 2005-06 and 2019-21, demonstrating that the SDG target 1.2 of reducing at least by half the proportion of men, women, and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030 is possible to achieve.”
The survey has noted that the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021 and the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 led to a global decline in human development, with countries now recovering. “India’s HDI value of 0.633 in 2021 places the country in the medium human development category, lower than its value of 0.645 in 2019.