Budget Progress Report FY2024-2025: Were the Promises Kept? [Part 1]

It has been around 6 months since Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the last budget. It indeed contained a comprehensive road- map of the union government’s plan for the growth and remodeling of the country. But were all the promises made by the union fulfilled? In this article, we will be analyzing the promises that were fulfilled.

With the budget session for the year 2025–26 coming up, let's analyze whether the promises were futile or not. The last budget was different from all other budgets presented by Sitharam, this is because most of her budgets were presented while the ruling party enjoyed a clear majority, but that wasn't the case in the last time.

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Promises that were fulfilled

Let us first look at the promises that were fulfilled by the Union under the last budget.

1. Revised Income Tax Slabs

Under the last budget, income tax slabs were revised under the new regime. The standard deduction is now Rs. 75,000 instead of Rs. 50,000.

2. Mission Indradhanush

Mission Indradhanush can be understood as a catch-up vaccination program under the Universal Immunisation Programme for Iow immunization in designated locations, with the coverage to vaccinate pregnant women and children who were left out and dropped out.

This program offers 11 different vaccine kinds that are utilized in the Universal Immunisation Program.

By analyzing the progress so far and inferring the government sources it could be concluded that this mission has vaccinated over 1.32 crore pregnant women and 0.47 crore children in its 12 phases. During the intensified Mission Indradhanush 5.0 (IMI 5.0), 1.01 crore

Children and 19.97 lakh pregnant women were immunized.

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3. Digitalisation of Technology

The Digital India program was initiated in our country by the central government under the Ministry of Electronics and IT in the year 2015 with the sole aim of converting the country into a society that is empowered with a knowledge-based economy through digital access, promoting digital inclusion, empowerment, and bridging the digital divide.

The Digital India initiative promotes e-education, e-health, e-commerce, e-skills, e-agro, and e-governance through various schemes administered by respective Ministries of the Government of India.

Now with regard to the progress so far, the Ministry of Electronics and has informed us that “

We have successfully used technology to improve productivity and bridge inequality in our economy during the past 10 years. Public investment in digital infrastructure and innovations by

the private sector have helped to improve access of all citizens, particularly the common people, to market resources, education, health, and services. We will step up adoption of technology towards digitalization of the economy.”

4. Digital Public Infrastructure for Private Sector

Digital public infrastructure acted as a catalyst for the private sector.

According to the Ministry of Electronics and IT, the progress is as follws “16 cross-sectoral DPIs already implemented and hosted at Indiastackglobal (https://www.indiastack.global/). International Center for DPI Innovation and Advancements (ICDIA) floated for taking up DPI applications rollout within India and abroad. ICDIA is a registered subsidiary company of the National Institute of Smart Government (NISG).

To showcase the successes of states and Union Territories in rolling out digital transformational solutions at the State level and to inspire national-level adoption/replication in other States, the Indiastacklocal (https://indiastacklocal.in/) portal has been launched. ”

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5. Defence Reserach and Development

One of the promises made by the union during the budget of 2022-23 was enhancement of the Research and development of Defence system.

According of the Ministry of Defence, the progress so far is as follows:

• 25% R&D Budget for private Industry and Academia for the development of defense technologies and science respectively.
• Approved project cost enhancement up to Rs 50 crore under the Technology Development Fund Scheme.
• The process to identify projects has been initiated.
• Consultation with all stakeholders including Industry and Academia and Standard Operating Procedure for such projects is being finalised.
• 15 DRDO-Academia-industry Centres of Excellence were established in various IITs/Universities across the country with 65 identified research themes for long-term focus on defence technologies.
• Streaming of schemes for industry & Academia for disruptive
• R&D by common framework for all grant-in-aid schemes.
• New project sanction: 217, Completed Project: 150 approx DRDO proposes the creation of SPVs/JVs for critical complex weapon systems and platforms. SPVs are being proposed in several areas: AMCA, TEDBF etc.

The not-so well kept promises by ruling party over the years will be discussed in details the upcoming article.

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