The fiscal year 2020-21 was unprecedented for the education sector in India. First, a new National Education Policy with an ambitious rollout timeline was announced. Second, it witnessed a near lockdown of all educational activity because of the pandemic. This has led to significant learning loss, particularly of foundational literacy and numeracy that will have to be recovered in the coming years. Both of these call for a significant investment of resources in the education sector. An analysis of central and Karnataka (as a representative state) education budgets for FY 2021-22 reveals that there is minimal funding to address either of these in the current fiscal year.
