During one of my recent trips to Delhi, I picked up a copy of the Economic Survey 2010-11. While browsing through it, I was struck my one figure: the amount of money we spend on social services. Page 294 of this report has the answer. Between the centre and the states, we spend about 25% of all our money on education, health and other related sectors. That figure is Rs 5,22,492 crore for 2010-11. Which comes to about $115 billion dollars, or about $100 per person per year.
I could not find a detailed break-down other than the fact that education accounts for 45% of this and health for 19%.
Given the quantum of corruption that we know of, what’s needed are ways that this money can be spent more efficiently. This is an important question because not only is the quantum very large, so is its growth rate. That expenditure has more than doubled in the past 4 years.
