A people-centric proposition

The break from giving sops to industry and throwing money at the poor is welcome

The Budget clearly had the 2024 ke in mind. However, one cannot fault a government for being political. What came as a pleasant surprise though, was that the Budget was an ambitious, people-centric agenda to address global challenges, and to facilitate sustainable economic development,” to quote the finance minister. The Budget did not follow the usual approach of spending money and offering breaks to boost industry, giving sops to agriculture to improve productivity and incomes, throwing money at the poor and down-trodden or, tomtomming increased expenditure for the social sector. There was no direct mention of any lobbying” group be they industry, labour, banks or bleeding hearts. A quick word search on the word poor”, for example, turned up only one mention in the entire speech and that too in the context of poor prisoners who remained incarcerated for lack of their ability to pay the bail money or the penalty.

Was the Budget ambitious? It talked about creating 100 research centres for 5G services-based application development, digital lockers, public digital infrastructure and the setting up of artificial intelligence research centres in educational institutions. Its focus on green growth through innovations in green activities and technology is especially commendable. The finance minister has plans to make 10 million farmers adopt natural farming, for which she has made special provisions to create 10,000 bio-input resource Centres. If they come up as planned, it will create a national-level production and distribution network for more organic micro-fertilisers and pesticides. This will have a long-term effect not only on agriculture but on the lives of those who produce and those who consume farm outputs.