The Union Budget for the fiscal year 2021-’22 was supposed to be a landmark plan. The Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman had said this Budget would be unprecedented, and while we know that such grandiose labels are used every year, the circumstances this year are different.
Coming on the back of an unprecedented global pandemic that has shot the wheels off the Indian economy, clearly there was an important moment. The Budget, already weary under the constraints of a stuttering economy, had much to do and a lot of people to please. The time had come to finally make a large allocation to public investment that could spur growth.
The government’s Principal Economic Advisor, Sanjeev Sanyal, said as much after the release of the Economy Survey on January 29, when he pointed out how India had bided its time and was now ready for a big push to both the demand and supply sides.
But there was little talk about the social sector in the run-up to the Budget.