Budget Of Hope

An expenditure budget focussed on consumer demand, private investment, health, education and agriculture is the need of the hour

- Alok Ranjan

On February 1, the Finance Minister shall present the Budget for the financial year 2021-22. The Budget comes after a year-long economic crisis which was the result of an unprecedented crisis in the form of the Coronavirus pandemic. Everybody is looking forward anxiously to the forthcoming Budget to gauge the response of the government to the crisis and also the direction of economic growth that it would indicate. The 1991 Budget was historic as it came in the wake of a serious Balance of Payments crisis and ushered in an era of economic reforms. The current crisis is much more threatening than that of 1991 as it is for the first time since 1979 that the country is poised to declare a negative growth rate to the extent of 7.5 per cent. This is despite the fact that the economy has shown remarkable resilience and bounced back much faster than expected with even the Reserve Bank of India claiming forthrightly that there is a V-Shaped recovery of the Indian economy. However, it cannot be denied that the pandemic has set back the economic clock and it will take time and a proper blend of policies and reforms to take the economy forward on the required rate of growth.