Union Budget 2022

The Union Budget was presented by Ms Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister of India on February 1, 2022. The budget was different in the sense that it was totally paperless and presented digitally. The focus of the budget, as it appears, is on Digitization of India. The government believes that it is only through digitization that the efficiency can come to the administration which will bring development faster. Digitization will also help in eliminating corruption from the system. Rightly they have proposed the setting up of Digital University and payment to contractors and suppliers digitally.

Another feature of this budget 2022-23 was that it focused more on long term policies, rather than short term measures. It says that budget is laying down the foundation of the economy for the next 25 years. It has focused primarily on the following four elements i.e Inclusive Development, Productivity Enhancement, Financing Investment and PM Gati Shakti.

 PM Gati Shakti is aimed at improving connectivity from all fronts, i.e mass transport, railways, roads, airforce, ports and logistic infrastructure. The strategy also covers national master plan aimed at world class modern infrastructure and logistic synergy.

The pandemic has made our school students suffer the most. The budget has proposed TV channel programmes of PMeVIDYA which will be expanded from 12 to 200 TV channels to enable the states in providing supplementary education in regional languages from Class I to XII. This is in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) which the government has announced in the year 2020. The new education policy aims to promote regional languages so as to enable the students to have better understanding of the subject and clarity of the concept. However, it can never be the substitute of physical classes. Online classes are not effective for the students of government schools, where the economically poor students take admission. They have no access over smartphones or computers.

For the people of North East a new initiative was announced i.e PM-DevINE. This scheme will fund infrastructure and social development based projects as needed in the North East. This will be implemented through the North Eastern Council (NEC). Initially a sum of Rs. 1500  crore has been earmarked for this initiative. This is indeed a good news for the people of North East.

Since the budget has been prepared with a long strategy, instantly it is very difficult to comment on worthiness of the budget. However, even the opposition leader Mr. Rahul Gandhi tweeted and said “There is nothing in the budget for the poor”. Similar views were also aired by Mamata Banerjee.

Whatever may be the views, I personally feel that the government’s first priority should always be in developing infrastructure and governance. By digitizing and promoting digitization, it aims to achieve these objectives faster. However, as always, there is too little for the middle income group people. They have suffered terribly in the pandemic and deserve relief. No relief has been given in direct taxes. Tax terrorism will continue with more legislative measures. This should be rechecked by the Finance Minister. All said & done, the budget is developmental in nature and will create direct and indirect job opportunities.

Dr K K Jhunjhunwlaa