evidence: Substantial reduction in the education budget over the past five years has reduced allocations for scholarships given to students from marginalised communities, affecting their ability to stay in the education system, shows an analysis of government data between 2015-’16 and 2019-’20. [...] Between 2014-’15 and 2019-’20, the share of education expenditure in the total Union budget fell from 4.1% to 3.4%. The dearth of funds is reflected in both the amount allocated for scholarships as well as a decline in the number of beneficiaries across categories of scholarships, our analysis shows. [...] - The budget allocation for pre-matric and post-matric scholarships for the ST category stayed stagnant year after year. Between 2015-’16 and 2017-’18, the number of post-matric beneficiaries fell from 2.03 million to 1.86 million, an 8.4% cutback.