The other casualty of COVID-19: Union Budget for 2020-21

A major alteration in the overall numbers of the Budget is almost inevitable because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Among the many casualties of COVID-19, the rapidly spreading respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, there is one victim that seems to have escaped attention of policy makers in India. That victim is the Union Budget for 2020-21.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Budget for 2020-21 on February 1, when the impact of COVID-19 on the economy was not fully evident. India  reported its first confirmed case on January 30, even though by that time China had begun reporting confirmation of about 1,500 flu-afflicted cases per day. But nobody in the world, let alone India, had by then raised