Allocation likely to be increased for National Digital Library Mission in Budget 2024

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will announce the Interim Budget for 2024-25 on February 1.

The National Digital Library Mission, which was launched to cater to the e-learning needs of students at all levels, is likely to be made available higher funds in the Interim Budget 2024-25. This would be in line with the government's push for artificial intelligence and democratising knowledge and information sharing.

In Budget 2023-24, the Ministry of Education was allocated Rs 1,12,899 crore, which was 13 percent higher than the revised estimates for 2022-23.

Allocation would be made to finance new initiatives such as teacher training in innovative pedagogy, professional development, and ICT implementation; libraries - digital and physical, and higher education.

The National Digital Library Mission, which was dedicated to the nation in June 2018, has become more significant after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted school education for two years.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that a National Digital Library for children would be created to enable the availability of quality books to all.

The Finance Minister proposed that the books will be made available across languages, genres, levels, and geographies and device-agnostic accessibility.

States were motivated to set up physical libraries at panchayat and ward levels and provide digital infrastructure to access the National Digital Library resources.

It was also proposed to include NGOs to spread literacy and inculcate reading habits among children. Besides financial regulators, various organisations have also been asked to share resources to spread financial literacy.

A new National Digital Library portal was launched in July this year, which boasts more than 1 billion content pieces and more than 80 million users. The digital library hosts content like books, articles, audio, thesis, and videos relevant to users from varying educational levels.