Big ideas for Budget D-Day

Jobs, skills and innovation should be the focal point

With the Union Budget less than three weeks away, every sign counts, especially as the seat of Budget-making, North Block, is almost sealed. So when the government on Wednesday renamed the Cabinet Committee on Employment and Skill Development to the Cabinet Committee on Skill, Employment, and Livelihood, the announcement conveyed a message for the Budget.  By putting skill before employment, is the government suggesting that skilling is its main focus area now in the backdrop of a labour shortage that’s posing a hurdle in factories and manufacturing hubs? And by bringing livelihood under the committee’s fold, is