BUDGET ALLOCATION FOR AI AND SMART SCHOOL INFRASTRUCTURE AFTER NEP 2020: A comparative analysis study of Indian states

 The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 positions Artificial Intelligence (AI) and smart school digital infrastructure as central pillars of India's education reform. Little is known about how public expenditure has supported this vision across states, since the implementation of NEP 2020's digital goals depends on financial commitment from both Union and state governments, and existing literature has examined policy, technology, and infrastructure disparities largely in isolation from budgetary data, leaving it unclear whether states with higher funding actually possess better digital infrastructure. This study examines budget allocation for AI and smart-school infrastructure after NEP 2020 using a quantitative, descriptive-comparative research design, drawing on secondary data from Union and state budget documents, Demand for Grants, Economic Survey reports, Samagra Shiksha records, and UDISE+ data to trace funding trends, compare allocations across seven states Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Delhi, Assam, Haryana, and Maharashtra and assess the relationship between expenditure and functional infrastructure. The findings indicate that while overall education budgets have generally increased, digital and AI-related allocations remain uneven in scale, inconsistently classified, and often not separately visible in budget documents, meaning that higher overall education spending does not reliably correspond to higher digital allocation. When AI/digital allocations are separated into comparability tiers and set against UDISE+ 2024-25 functional-infrastructure data, a positive association emerges between narrowly defined, identifiable AI/ICT spending and the share of schools with functional computers (Spearman's ρ = +0.68 to +0.79 depending on specification, n = 7), though the small sample means this association is indicative rather than statistically conclusive. This study contributes a comparative, funding-focused perspective largely absent from existing NEP 2020 research and highlights the need for standardized budget reporting to enable meaningful cross-state comparisons and accountability