This book analyses the magnitude of public expenditure on education, the composition of such expenditure, the flow of funds from the Centre to the districts, and the bottlenecks in the process, with a focus on elementary education. Most of the existing body of work in this area concentrates on Central Government`s budgetary provisions instead. The significance of this research lies in that it dwells on the major challenges confronting the States with regard to these issues.

Public Provisioning for Elementary Education in India focuses on elementary education in the context of the ongoing efforts towards Universalising Elementary Education (UEE) in the country. The book tracks budget expenditures and budgetary and planning processes in the current flagship programme of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) across the four selected States of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat and Rajasthan. It addresses the causes of the fiscal crisis in States in the era of economic reforms, and the policy measures required for improving the flow of public expenditure on education. This book offers important insights for policymakers, academia and social activists interested in `Input—Process—Output—Impact` of State intervention in the education sector in general and elementary education in particular.