Top-down Budget

A whole host of Budget announcements has a distinct imprint of the Prime Minister

This might be first time that the Union Budget speech mentioned quantum computing and also proposed an outlay of Rs 8,000 crore spread over five years for a national tech centre focused on the area. It appears that ahead of the Budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, in a meeting with the council of ministers and secretaries, discussed the relevance of quantum computing, artificial intelligence, internet of things, drones and data parks in relation to technological innovation. That idea from the top found its way into the Budget.

That’s not the only proposal in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget that had an imprint of the prime minister, according to people who’ve attended some of the meetings in December-January. In fact, three Ts — technology, trade and tourism — have been the focus of deliberations in many of these meetings.

Among others, the proposal on a National Technical Textiles Mission at an outlay of Rs 1,480 crore might also have been a brainchild of the prime minister, who batted for textile manufacturing parks and textile machinery manufacturing parks in one of the meetings close to the Budget. 

In the speech, Sitharaman said, "In­dia imports a significant quantity of technical textiles worth $16 billion every year." To reverse the trend and put India on the global map in technical textiles, the finance minister announced the textiles mission.

Promoting exports has been a core subject in the prime minister’s interactions with ministers and bureaucrats. He has been pressing for 

regular meetings with top state representatives to identify a list of products from across the country with export potential and to execute the plan so that quality issues, often raised by other countries, can also be addressed. That too was reflected in the Budget presented last week. Referring to the prime minister’s call for quality, the FM said she had asked for mandatory technical standards and their effective enforcement. "All ministries, during the course of this year, would be issuing quality standard orders."

Staying with the export theme, the Budget announced a new scheme — NIRVIK — to provide for higher insurance cover, reduction in premium for small exporters and simplified procedure for claim settlements. Sitharaman’s speech, which acknowledges the PM’s vision and goals several times, speaks of it in relation to exports as well. 

"It is the vision of the PM that each district should develop as an export hub. Efforts of the Centre and state governments are being synergised for that," she said. 

While tourism has always been close to the PM’s heart, he once again sought ideas from bureaucrats in the past couple of months to make it a vibrant sector. The latest Budget speech that ran close to three hours, however, has only six paragraphs on culture and tourism. An official pointed out that the PM perhaps didn’t want a tourism overkill in the Budget at a time when economic slowdown has already hit the sector hard. In her speech, the FM asked the state governments to develop a road map for certain destinations and also formulate financial plans after which grants would be given.

Almost the entire Part A of the Budget speech dealing with macro themes, and which took up more than half the time, is sprinkled with PM’s ideas and vision, those reading the fine print point out. 

Whether it’s about the new economy or agriculture, aspirational districts or electronic manufacturing, in essence it’s the PM’s Budget, even as the general narrative has been that it was possibly drafted by the Prime Minister’s Office. 

Now that the Budget is done, the government is believed to be preparing for the next big show. No, not the next Budget in February 2021, but big-ticket announcements on key economic issues over the next couple of months. The thinking is that the Budget is not the only economic event for the country. It’s better to have a series of announcements throughout the year. Several big announcements were made before the Budget as well to tackle the overall demand slowdown and financial stress in some difficult sectors. 

The buzz is that the next round of big bang announcements will be about employment creation and skill development, while the country aims to reach the 25th rank in World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business by 2025, from 63rd now.