He said that every day 290 new habitations were getting access to drinking water, 17 habitations were getting linked to all-weather rural roads, 52 villages were getting access to telephone and 4,113 new houses were being built under Indira Awas Yojna under the Bharat Nirman programme.
Education saw a 20% rise in budgetary allocation from Rs 28,674 crore to Rs 34,400 crore with accent shifting from primary to secondary education and extenstion of mid-day meal scheme to all upper primary schools. About 11.4 crore children will benefit from the scheme now. It will rise to 15 crore once upper primary classes are included.
The Sarva Siksha Abhiyan will shift emphasis to access to upper primary education and improvement of quality of learning, and Rs 13,100 crore has been allocated.
The budget has also doubled the allocation for the minorities affair ministry to Rs 1,000 crore while it has announced a special package for handloom weavers, handicraft workers with six big clusters to be developed for the benefit of the workers in these sectors. Varanasi and Sibsagar will have big clusters for handlooms, Bhiwandi and Erode will have clusters for powerlooms, while Narsapur ad Moradabad will have clusters for handicrafts.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, with an initial allocation of Rs 16,000 crore, will cover all districts in the country from April. Currently, it covers only 330 districts with a budget of Rs 12,000 crore.
