Restoring weighted tax deductions and adopting a petty patents regime can foster firm-level innovative activity critical for competitiveness, points out Nagesh Kumar.
'The real story of 2025 is that India officially stopped being a 'market of the future' and started acting as the world's primary economic engine.'
The Rs 1-trillion Research Development and Innovation (RDI) fund, which was announced in the July budget for FY25, of which Rs 20,000 crore has already been allocated, will be operationalised in the next two to three months, a top official said.
In a double-dose bid to boost growth and employment prospects, the Union Cabinet on Tuesday approved a Rs 2.07 trillion outlay for a research development and innovation (RDI) Scheme to fund private sector innovations, and an employment-linked incentive (ELI) to create over 35 million new jobs over the next two years.
The Union Budget 2025-26 has allocated Rs 1,024.30 crore for expenses incurred by the Council of Ministers, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Prime Minister's Office, and for hospitality and entertainment of state guests. The allocated amount is a bit more than the Rs 1,021.83 crore earmarked in 2024-25.
Artificial Intelligence, innovation and next-generation technologies figured prominently during the high-stakes discussion between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump at the White House, as the two sides announced transformative measures, including the US-India TRUST initiative, roadmap on accelerating AI infrastructure and INDUS Innovation, to boost tech ties.
The government may save over Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) on capital and revenue expenditure allocated towards new schemes in the FY25 Budget that are yet to be implemented.
The allocated amount is substantially lower than the Rs 1,803.01 crore earmarked in 2023-24.
The government on Thursday listed bills on personal data protection, to amend forest conservation laws and on the contentious ordinance on Delhi services for the monsoon session of Parliament beginning next week.
The nearly month-long monsoon session is likely to have 20 sittings and would conclude before Independence Day.
The monsoon session is expected to commence in the old Parliament building and later move to the new building, sources said. The new building was inaugurated by Modi on May 28.
At the outset, all eyes will be on the Lok Sabha Secretariat on Monday when it is expected to review the stay granted by the Supreme Court on the conviction of Rahul Gandhi in the 'Modi surname' case and decide on the revocation of his Parliament membership.
The productivity of the Budget session was abysmal. The Lok Sabha functioned for 33% of its scheduled time (46 hours); the Rajya Sabha 24% (32 hours).
The Union budget for 2023-24 has allocated Rs 1,258.68 crore for various heads of expenditure of the Union cabinet, including salaries, sumptuary and travel by ministers and entertainment of foreign state guests.
The situation in Manipur and the Delhi services ordinance are set to dominate the Monsoon session of Parliament beginning Thursday with the Opposition gearing up to raise these issues to corner the government.
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi has said that 31 bills will be taken up in the monsoon session. Among these include the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, 2023.
The FM said there has been a manifold increase in digital payments in the recent past.
Sitharaman said the government will bring in a new national education policy to transform India's higher education system into one of the best in the world.
Dr Ajay Kumar Sood will have to complete a task his predecessor started: Getting the government to sign off on a new Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy on which work was begun in 2020.
In the last budget, then finance minister Arun Jaitley had allocated Rs 85,010 crore for the education sector which was later revised to Rs 83,625.86 crore.
'English must be taught extremely well to all children in all schools, and especially so in those schools where the medium of instruction until Grade 5/8 is in the mother tongue/local language/regional language.'
Javadekar asserted that the first 50 days have shown that Modi government's second term will be more effective and will build on the success of its previous tenure.
Most of the scanty 6.35% rise in the defence budget is accounted for by manpower and running expenses.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday presented the Budget for 2021-22 in the Lok Sabha that is expected to provide relief to the pandemic-hit common man as well as focus more on driving economic recovery through higher spending on healthcare, infrastructure and defence amid rising tensions with neighbours, As India emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, the ninth Budget under the Modi government, including an interim one, is widely expected to focus on boosting spending on job creation and rural development, generous allocations for development schemes, putting more money in the hands of the average taxpayer and easing rules to attract foreign investments.
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