Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with team members shows the Budget paper before leaving for Rashtrapati Bhavan, at North Block in New Delhi on July 23, 2024.
| Photo Credit: SHIV KUMAR PUSHPAKAR

The Union Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the full Budget for 2024-25, sources said. Following this, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her seventh budget in the Lok Sabha.

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Ms. Sitharaman, India’s first full-time woman Finance Minister, has presented five full budgets since July 2019 and an interim budget on February 1, 2024.

This is the first budget of the BJP-led NDA government in its third term in office.

Earlier today, Ms. Sitharaman called on President Droupadi Murmu before presenting the full Budget for 2024-25. As per established tradition, the Finance Minister met the President at the Rashtrapati Bhavan before heading to Parliament.

President Murmu offered ‘dahi-chini’ (curd-sugar), considered auspicious, to Ms. Sitharaman before she left for Parliament to present the Union Budget.

It was encouraging that the Finance Minister today opened the Union Budget speech by talking about India’s economic growth, which is expected to be at 7%, the highest among the major economies. It was reassuring as across the world, there are several nations standing at the brink of a slowdown.

India’s success in managing the COVID-19 pandemic, even as it put people first, and yet managed to minimise the economic impact, stands as a valuable lesson for generations to come; that populations are the bedrock of an economy. Further, the crisis underlined that a nation must ensure its healthcare ecosystem is not only robust, but resilient too.

In the present day, delivering healthcare and making ecosystems resilient require a fine balance between advanced medicine, cutting-edge technology, skilled resources and preventive healthcare. A country’s health infrastructure must enable its doctors to deliver best-in-class clinical outcomes. There must be continuous innovation to boost quality of medical education and a concerted focus on skilling for healthcare is vital. Finally, contemporary technologies should be harnessed to achieve these goals, bridge gaps and prepare for the future.

I believe the Budget announcements set the course towards most of these aspects that will have an impact in the near and longer-term too. In particular, a welcome one was the 157 new nursing colleges that would be established in collaboration with existing medical colleges.

Similarly, skilling youth for the manifold aspects of healthcare will create a valuable talent factory for India and the world. Several nations with a considerable silver population are grappling with an acute paucity of resources and exporting our talent. New multidisciplinary courses for medical devices, setting up of 5G labs and centres of excellence for Artificial Intelligence will ensure that India has the talent base to exploit the opportunities from futuristic medical technologies, as they arise.

Focus on medical research and innovation with select ICMR labs made available to the private sector for research and development (R&D) will encourage collaboration between biotech entrepreneurs and the government. These initiatives along with a new programme to promote research and innovation in the pharmaceutical industry highlights the Budget’s focus on technology in making strong strides towards a healthier and more prosperous India.

Above all, the fact of medicine is that the best way to beat disease, is to avert it. Therefore, similar to the thrust on the Sickle Cell Anaemia Elimination Mission announced today, it would be wonderful if many more of the non-communicable diseases are targeted to prevent millions of untimely fatalities.

The writer is Executive Vice Chairperson, Apollo Hospitals and past president, NATHEALTH