Centre to push urban infra, mobility: Expert
Hyderabad: The Centre has shown its interest in providing impetus to urban infrastructure in the Budget. Besides aiming for urban sector policies, capacity building, planning, implementation and governance, the government also expects to find innovative ways of financing and faster implementation and building metro systems of appropriate type at scale.
The government expects to make urban mobility easy through “multimodal connectivity between mass urban transport and railway Stations” on priority. Both Jal Jeevan Mission and Gram Sadak Yojana have seen their allocation go up substantially this year, Anil K Sood, professor and co-founder, IASCC (The Institute for Advanced Studies in Complex Choices) points out.
Banking and finance
Launch of digital currency is a key announcement. In addition, the budget provides additional opportunities for sector’s growth, e.g., the extension of Credit and Finance Guarantee for MSMEs would help enhance the quality of credit portfolio, GIFT city is expected to facilitate sustainable and climate finance in India, provision of government support for blended finance will help banks and other intermediaries participate in financing sunrise opportunities, etc.
In addition, the government is expected to drive capital investment through public-private partnership – creating an opportunity for growth of credit as well as non-credit financial services, Sood added.
Higher education
The budget has brought additional focus to education this year, with an increased allocation for schools as well as higher education. The government is investing to expand the ‘one class-one TV channel’, under eVIDYA programme, from 12 to 200 TV channels. This investment is expected to “enable all States to provide supplementary education in regional languages for classes 1-12.” The National Education Mission is expected to get a significantly higher allocation at Rs 40,000 crore.
Household perspective
“As we know, the pandemic has adversely impacted the economic and financial condition of an average urban as well as rural (health care cost and lost earnings) household. While there has been some amount of support being provided through various fiscal and financial measures during the last two years, the budget was an opportunity to help the households rebuild their finances. We have neither seen any reduction in direct taxes nor a major increase in support through various income or cost support programmes,” he noted.
For example, the MNREGA allocation is down by Rs 25,000 crore, compared to the revised estimates and the next year’s expenditure on PM Awas Yojana is the same as the current year (about Rs 48,000). The lack of support makes it worse, as the households have been bearing the increased cost of petrol, diesel, gas and other daily needed goods and services even when the pandemic was destroying lives and livelihoods.
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