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