Budgets are often read as balance sheets of numbers. The Union Budget deserves to be read instead as a map—one that clearly marks the highways, milestones, and turning points on India’s long journey towards a Viksit Bharat. It is ambitious, forward-looking, and rooted in a clear belief: that the dreams of the present must be backed by the foundations of the future.
At its core, this Budget is a highway of immense opportunities. It speaks to aspiration while demonstrating restraint, combining growth with fiscal discipline and ambition with institutional continuity. The signposts to 2047 are unmistakable, with Skill, Scale, and Sustainability emerging not as slogans, but as clearly defined pathways.
With nearly half of India’s population below the age of 25, the future of a developed India will be shaped decisively by today’s youth. This Budget recognises young Indians not as a demographic statistic, but as the nation’s most valuable capital—vigorous, productive, and transformative. Human capital formation, especially in an era marked by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, will determine India’s long-term growth trajectory. Financial support for new educational institutions, emerging disciplines, and future-ready skills has the potential to unleash productivity gains that can lift both GDP and per capita incomes over time.
What is particularly encouraging is the unambiguous recognition of premier institutions as allies in building India’s human capital. The announcement of a scheme to upskill 10,000 tourist guides across 20 key destinations through a standardised, high-quality 12-week hybrid programme, in collaboration with an IIM, is emblematic of this approach. Skilling at scale requires not just funding, but rigour, pedagogy, and credibility—qualities that India’s leading institutions bring to the table.
As India expands tourism, logistics, healthcare, creative industries, and digital services, the demand will increasingly be for professionals who combine domain knowledge with soft skills, cultural sensitivity, and ethical grounding. Institutions like the IIMs are uniquely positioned to help train this next generation—future-ready, globally competitive, and locally rooted—thereby converting demographic advantage into durable economic strength.
Equally significant is the way infrastructure is being re-imagined as an ecosystem enabler. Dedicated freight corridors, expanded waterways, high-speed rail, medical tourism, and tax incentives for global investments in data and cloud centres collectively reshape the entrepreneurial landscape. These are not isolated announcements; they alter the cost, speed, and confidence with which enterprise can be built in India. The budget has also done well to tap the economic potential of India’s soft power with the proposals to further develop medical tourism services, animation, visual effects, gaming and comics industry, sports, and Yoga.
The Budget’s sensitivity to the middle class and its realism about economic geography also stand out. Improved credit access for MSMEs, faster settlement of receivables from public sector units, and a clear focus on Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities will generate jobs closer to where people live—reducing the need to wait for trickle-down effects and enabling growth where aspirations already exist.
The renewed momentum to Make in India and Aatmanirbhar Bharat is visible in the unprecedented support for sunrise sectors—biopharma, semiconductors, electronic components, critical minerals, advanced textiles, and high-tech manufacturing. The creation of champion MSMEs signals a shift from scale alone to capability and competitiveness.
The Budget’s human-centric lens is perhaps most evident in its focus on women and creativity. With over 10 crore women engaged in self-help groups, the emphasis on women-led enterprise ecosystems is timely. In Kerala, initiatives such as SmartShree, led by IIM Kozhikode’s incubator IIMK LIVE in partnership with Kudumbashree, demonstrate how structured capacity building and mentorship can unlock this unrealised potential. Similarly, support for creative technologies and content labs underlines a welcome shift—recognising the orange economy as a source of jobs, innovation, and cultural leadership. The recently released Economic Survey rightly reminds us that the global environment is being reshaped by geopolitical churn. In such times, resilience, patient institution-building, and long-term thinking matter more than quick fixes. This Budget takes that right step.