Union Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs , Anurag Thakur held 10th and final Pre-Budget Consultation meeting with the leading representatives from Health, Education and Rural Development Sectors in connection with the forthcoming General Budget 2020-21. The main areas of discussion by the representatives in the aforesaid meeting was related to improving efficiency in delivery of health services; devising innovative ways to reach primary health care facilities for marginalised sections; improving learning outcomes at primary level while also making secondary and higher level education accessible and affordable; reforms related to pension and social protections especially for the weaker sections; focus of Government on public investment in social sector; gender equality with bottom's up methodology; ways to boost economic and social infrastructure of rural sector and ways to eradicate unemployment and poverty through development of agriculture and allied sector as well as non-farm sector.
Among the many suggestions given by representatives of Health, Education and Rural Development Sectors were benefits of child budgeting; a dedicated National Fund for protection of children; eradication of child labour; collecting gender disaggregated data by a National mission; policy to encourage healthy food habits via measures like higher taxes on sin products; broadening, expanding and strengthening PDS; land titles to women in view of increasing feminisation of agriculture; changes in general procurement guidelines to include disabled-friendly technology; waiver of tax on assisted technology for disabled persons; better compliance of Right to Education and more financial allocation for secondary level schools, especially to support girl child and widening family healthcare support; augmenting pre-conception, antenatal and postnatal nutrition; employment generation with skill matching for youth in urban areas; focused skill development training for Adivasi and Dalit women; attracting more talent to aspirational districts with provision of tax holiday and a more effective monitoring of funds at Centre-State level.
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