Budget Powers Viksit Bharat with Jobs, Energy, And Innovation Focus

There were increased expectations from Union Budget 2025-26 concerning building on the momentum of last year’s 9 budget plan concerns – and it has provided. With India marching towards understanding the Viksit Bharat vision, this budget plan takes decisive steps for high-impact growth. The Economic Survey’s price quote of 6.4% real GDP growth and retail inflation softening from 5.4% in FY24 to 4.9% in FY25 strengthens India’s position as the world’s fastest-growing significant economy. The budget for the coming financial has capitalised on prudent fiscal management and enhances the 4 essential pillars of India’s economic strength – tasks, energy security, employment production, and innovation.

India needs to develop 7.85 million non-agricultural jobs every year till 2030 – and this budget plan steps up. It has actually enhanced workforce abilities through the launch of 5 National Centres of Excellence for Skilling and aims to line up training with “Produce India, Produce the World” manufacturing needs. Additionally, a growth of capability in the IITs will accommodate 6,500 more trainees, ensuring a stable pipeline of technical talent. It likewise identifies the function of micro and little enterprises (MSMEs) in creating employment. The enhancement of credit assurances for micro and little from 5 crore to 10 crore, opens an additional 1.5 lakh crore in loans over 5 years. This, paired with personalized charge card for micro enterprises with a 5 lakh limitation, will improve capital access for little services. While these steps are good, employment the scaling of industry-academia cooperation in addition to fast-tracking employment training will be essential to ensuring sustained job creation.

India stays extremely reliant on Chinese imports for solar modules, electric vehicle (EV) batteries, employment and crucial electronic components, exposing the sector to geopolitical threats and trade barriers. This spending plan takes this challenge head-on. It designates 81,174 crore to the energy sector, employment a significant increase from the 63,403 crore in the present fiscal, signalling a major push towards enhancing supply chains and minimizing import dependence. The exemptions for 35 extra capital items needed for EV battery production contributes to this. The decrease of import duty on solar batteries from 25% to 20% and solar modules from 40% to 20% reduces costs for designers while India scales up domestic production capacity. The allocation to the ministry of new and renewable resource (MNRE) has increased 53% to 26,549 crore, with the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana seeing an 80% dive to 20,000 crore. These steps provide the decisive push, however to really achieve our climate goals, we must also speed up financial investments in battery recycling, crucial mineral extraction, and strategic supply chain integration.

With capital expenditure estimated at 4.3% of GDP, the greatest it has been for the past 10 years, this budget plan lays the foundation for India’s production resurgence. Initiatives such as the National Manufacturing Mission will offer enabling policy support for small, medium, and big markets and will further strengthen the Make-in-India vision by enhancing domestic value chains. Infrastructure stays a traffic jam for employment producers. The spending plan addresses this with enormous financial investments in logistics to lower supply chain expenses, which presently stand at 13-14% of GDP, substantially higher than that of the majority of the developed countries (~ 8%). A foundation of the Mission is tidy tech manufacturing. There are guaranteeing measures throughout the worth chain. The spending plan introduces customizeds duty exemptions on lithium-ion battery scrap, cobalt, and 12 other important minerals, protecting the supply of necessary products and enhancing India’s position in worldwide clean-tech worth chains.

Despite India’s flourishing tech ecosystem, research and development (R&D) investments remain listed below 1% of GDP, compared to 2.4% in China and 3.5% in the US. Future tasks will require Industry 4.0 abilities, and India should prepare now. This spending plan tackles the gap. A great start is the federal government assigning 20,000 crore to a private-sector-driven Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) effort. The spending plan identifies the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) by presenting the PM Research Fellowship, which will provide 10,000 fellowships for technological research in IITs and IISc with boosted financial backing. This, together with a Centre of Excellence for AI and 50,000 Atal Tinkering Labs in government schools, are optimistic steps towards a knowledge-driven economy.