26

Jan

Budget Allocations Leave Religious Minorities Famished and Deprived

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John Dayal

New Delhi | Monday | 26 January 2026

As the Union Budget for 2026–27 is being finalised for presentation in Parliament on February 1, the familiar rituals of expectation and political messaging are underway. Ministries have submitted their demands, the Prime Minister’s Office has weighed in with its priorities, and sensitive allocations for defence and internal security have been quietly ring-fenced. Yet one group remains largely invisible in this annual exercise of national planning: India’s religious minorities.

This was not always the case. During the tenure of the United Progressive Alliance, with Sonia Gandhi chairing the coalition and Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, minority welfare acquired institutional visibility with the creation of the Ministry of Minority Affairs (MoMA) in 2006. Its mandate covered Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Parsis, focusing on education, skill development, infrastructure in minority-concentrated areas, and cultural preservation.

Since 2014, however, minority concerns have steadily slipped down the budgetary priority list. Although the government reiterates its commitment to “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”, the fiscal record tells a more sobering story. Nominal allocations to the MoMA rose from about ₹3,200 crore in 2014–15 to a peak of around ₹5,000 crore in 2022–23, but subsequent cuts and persistent under-utilisation have eroded their real impact. Adjusted for average annual inflation of about 5.5 per cent, the ministry’s 2024–25 budget translates to roughly ₹2,600 crore in 2014–15 rupee terms—significantly below the real spending levels of the first five years of the Modi government.

Article at a Glance
As the Union Budget 2026–27 is prepared, India’s religious minorities remain largely sidelined in fiscal planning. Although the Ministry of Minority Affairs was created in 2006 to promote education, skills and infrastructure, its real spending power has declined since 2014 after adjusting for inflation.
The sharpest cuts have hit scholarship schemes, with major programmes reduced or scrapped, leading to a fall in beneficiaries and weakening access to higher education. Christians face a “double burden”: minimal shares in welfare schemes and the crippling impact of mass FCRA licence cancellations that shut down many Church-run schools, hospitals and NGOs.
Meanwhile, public spending on Hindu pilgrimage and heritage infrastructure has surged, highlighting an imbalance in priorities. This growing asymmetry raises concerns about equality, secularism and the state’s commitment to inclusive development.

The contraction has been most damaging in education, traditionally the backbone of minority empowerment. Scholarships—pre-matric, post-matric and merit-cum-means—once absorbed nearly ₹1,900 crore annually. Since 2019, these schemes have suffered dramatic reductions. Pre-matric allocations fell from ₹1,425 crore in 2021–22 to ₹433 crore in 2023–24, while merit-cum-means support shrank from ₹365 crore to a mere ₹44 crore. Two flagship initiatives—the Maulana Azad National Fellowship for research scholars and the Padho Pardesh scheme for overseas studies—were scrapped altogether in 2022, abruptly affecting thousands of aspirational students.

The impact is visible in numbers. Scholarship beneficiaries declined from over 67 lakh in 2019–20 to about 62 lakh two years later, even before accounting for rising enrolments and costs. When viewed alongside the New Education Policy’s emphasis on early exits and skill-oriented tracks, the cumulative effect on bright students from poor minority families is potentially devastating.

Within this overall shrinkage, Christians face what community leaders describe as a “double whammy”. Constituting about 2.3 per cent of India’s population, they receive a disproportionately small share of minority welfare funds. Available data suggest that Christian students account for barely 1–5 per cent of scholarship recipients, and in some skill-development schemes less than one per cent, despite relatively strong educational indicators in several regions. Church bodies have long argued that Muslims, who make up around 14 per cent of the population, corner 80–90 per cent of benefits—a demographic reality that nonetheless leaves smaller minorities severely under-served.

The second blow has come from the sweeping cancellation of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) licences since 2020. Thousands of Church-run NGOs—major providers of education, healthcare and social services in remote and tribal areas—lost the legal ability to receive overseas funds. The closure or downsizing of schools, hospitals and development projects followed, throwing large numbers of staff out of work and weakening community-level safety nets. Even globally respected institutions such as the Missionaries of Charity were not spared initially, until public outcry forced a partial reversal.

Infrastructure schemes tell a similar story. The Pradhan Mantri Jan Vikas Karyakram (PMJVK), aimed at minority-concentrated districts, saw its allocation rise from ₹113 crore in 2014–15 to about ₹400 crore in 2023–24—an increase that looks substantial on paper but remains modest relative to need. In Christian-majority districts of the Northeast, these funds barely scratch the surface of requirements for schools, roads, health centres and community facilities.

All this contrasts sharply with the scale of public expenditure on Hindu pilgrimage and cultural infrastructure. The Ram temple complex and urban renewal in Ayodhya have absorbed over ₹1,000 crore; Varanasi has seen investments exceeding ₹4,000 crore; the Char Dham highway project in the Himalayas carries a price tag of more than ₹12,000 crore. Similar funding flows to Mathura, Vrindavan, Somnath and to massive events such as the Kumbh Mela. Officially, these are framed as tourism, urban development or heritage projects rather than religious spending, yet their cumulative effect underscores a clear tilt in priorities.

The issue is not the legitimacy of developing heritage towns or improving infrastructure for millions of pilgrims. It is the growing asymmetry between such largesse and the tightening purse strings for constitutionally recognised minorities whose socio-economic vulnerabilities remain acute. When minority welfare budgets shrink, scholarship schemes vanish, NGOs are throttled financially, and incidents of communal violence rise, the promise of equal citizenship begins to ring hollow.

India’s Constitution does not privilege any faith, even as it protects cultural and religious freedom. The steady marginalisation of minority concerns in fiscal planning, particularly of the small and politically weak Christian community, raises troubling questions about the direction of the republic’s social contract. Budgetary choices are, ultimately, moral and political statements. As Parliament prepares to debate the 2026–27 Budget, the silence surrounding minority deprivation speaks louder than any slogan of inclusive development.

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