Education

Dr Yajulu Medury, Vice Chancellor, Mahindra University

”The budget provides a much-needed impetus towards empowering the education sector and youth towards helping them realize their true potential. The setting up of 100 5G enabled labs to develop apps in engineering institutions and 3 centers of excellence in Artificial Intelligence is a major step towards ‘Make AI in India and Make AI Work for India’ and helps in shaping the new engineer of today. The 30-skill India international centres across states will further promote interdisciplinary research for developing cutting-edge applications to transform critical sectors and provide solutions for sustainable cities. In order to bridge the skill gap in India, the budget is in line with Mahindra University’s focus on integrating critical thinking and problem-solving through a dynamic and diverse curriculum.”

Neha Bagaria founder & CEO of JobsForHer

“We appreciate the emphasis on training the young population, and the decision to decrease the total tax obligation, which encourages domestic spending. However, we were hoping for a gender-inclusive budget that would offer more chances for women’s career growth, tax incentives to hasten their skills development, lower the cost of higher education for women, and provide support for female entrepreneurs. Hope these are also included in future drafts”.

Energy / Sustainability

Dr. Prateek Kanakia, Chairman and Founder, TheGreenBillions

“This budget should be labelled as the first Green Budget as the businesses can now adopt a greener approach and cultivate sustainable solutions practices with the allocation of ₹35,000 for priority capital investment towards energy transition. Launching the national green hydrogen mission is a significant step in moving towards clean & green energy. Further, municipal solid waste can play an important role in achieving a hydrogen production capacity of 5 metric million tonnes by 2030. Given India’s G20 presidency, this budget is a watershed moment in India’s fight towards climate change.”

Economy

Ms PREETI MALHOTRA, Chairman, India – Foreign Investors India Forum

Extremely happy to note that the vision of ‘Saptarishi’ outlined in the budget today is a vision for Bharat@100 – a democratic and developed nation by 2047. India’s growth plans are ambitious, ‘unleashing potential’ requires intense capital investment that must be financed by exploring current avenues such as FDI which continues to be a key catalyst for growth. Foreign Investors, especially OCIs, who are more committed to the motherland require certain liberalisation in terms of taxation of global income on extended stays in the country. Several reports and case studies have shown a strong positive correlation between FDI and economic growth and a lot of our Asian neighbours have successfully used FDI to achieve exponential growth. For India too, this must be the next immediate step to direct the nation towards “Amrit Kaal.”

Nilanjan Banik, Economist, Mahindra University

“It is a fantastic budget. It has elements of unleashing purchasing power both from the perspective of consumers and businesses. For the common man, there has been an increase in tax rebates. For businesses and the economy as a whole, there has been an increase in the allocation of capital expenditure. Capital expenditure is hiked to Rs 10 trillion and this money when used for building roads, ports, and airports will lead to a further round of income and employment generation. Additionally, an all-time high allocation towards the railway sector will complement this connectivity pan-India and will make India a better place to do business. And all of this spending towards capital expenditure is undertaken by taking into consideration that the fiscal deficit is kept under control. Money is being spent judiciously and towards the infrastructure sector, keeping in mind the long-term (amrit kaal) growth”.

We welcome the 2023 budget presented by our Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman. As far as the education sector goes, the focus has been on digital and employment.

FM has mentioned hiring teachers and support staff for the education sector, which will definitely improve the education system in urban cities and the rural part of the country.

By introducing National Digital Library and physical libraries, it is evident that the government wants school students to ensure reading is a major activity among them as well as makeup for the pandemic learning loss.
We also welcome the FM’s initiative of empowering women and green initiatives through this budget.

It was nice to see that the government is focused on making life easier for salaried employees by increasing the basic exemption limit to Rs 3lakh under the new tax regime.

Mr. Jai Decosta, Founder and CEO, K12 Techno Services