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A high-power committee will be constituted to consider the challenges arising from “fast population growth and demographic changes”, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her interim Budget speech.
The Finance Minister said the committee would be mandated to make recommendations to comprehensively address these challenges in relation to the goal of Viksit Bharat, or a developed India.
The announcement comes against the backdrop of an indefinitely postponed Census, which means that there is little reliable data to back up her assertion of “fast” population growth in the country; the little data that exist suggest that the country’s fertility rate is falling below replacement levels.
Despite the absence of sound statistics, security concerns in border areas are also being highlighted on the basis of purported demographic changes.
To a question from The Hindu on whether the committee was aimed at population stabilisation and if it would be set in motion after the next Census, Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth said: “India’s demographics are an opportunity as well as a challenge. The committee will look at those aspects and the final terms of reference will reflect the focus.”
Inclusive, innovative, sign of continuity: PM (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi characterised the interim Budget tabled as “inclusive and innovative”, one that “carries the confidence of continuity”, a reference to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s assertion that the Modi government will present the full Budget in July after the Lok Sabha poll.
“This Budget will empower all pillars of developed India — the youth, the poor, women, and farmers. It carries the guarantee of strengthening the foundations of Viksit Bharat by 2047,” the Prime Minister said. Stating that the Budget reflected the aspirations of “young India”, he highlighted two significant announcements — that of a fund of ₹1 lakh crore for research and innovations, and the extension of tax exemptions for start-ups.
Economy
School, Higher Education Departments get more money in interim Budget (Page no. 1)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Both Higher Education and School Education departments under the Union Ministry of Education received an increased budgetary allocation in the Interim Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman here. Schemes such as PM Schools for Rising India (PM SHRI) got almost 50% more allocation than the last Budget.
The total allocation for the School Education Department is ₹ 73,008.10 crore. In the last Budget, it was ₹68,804.85 crore. In the revised estimates of last fiscal, the amount was ₹72,473.80 crore.
Actual expenditure of 2022-23 was ₹58639.56 crore. Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman (PM POSHAN), previously known as the mid-day meal scheme, received an outlay of ₹12,467.39 crore.
For PM SHRI, the allocation is ₹6,050 crore. For Higher Education Department, the total allocation is ₹47,619.77 crore. In the last Budget, it was ₹44,094.62 crore. In the revised estimates, it rose to ₹57,244.48 crore and in 2022-23, the actual expenditure was ₹38,556.80 crore.
New scheme for bio-manufacturing, bio-foundry on the cards (Page no. 4)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In her interim Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke of “a new scheme of bio-manufacturing and bio-foundry” to provide “environment-friendly alternatives such as biodegradable polymers, bio-plastics, bio-pharmaceuticals and bio-agri-inputs”.
The announcement is part of a bid to have the bio-economy contribute $300 billion to the Indian economy by 2030, representing a jump of about ₹18 lakh crore in value from current levels, and $1 trillion by 2047. The products of the bio-economy also play key roles in India’s sustainability and ‘green’ economy targets.
The way to upskill India’s bio-science sector is to put money into bio-manufacturing and not only prioritise research,” said Shambhavi Naik.
1 crore homes to get free power via solarisation (Page no. 5)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
Taking a cue from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance following the Ayodhya temple consecration that one crore households will be electrified via rooftop solar installations, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Interim Budget reiterated that commitment.
“Through rooftop solarisation, one crore households will be enabled to obtain up to 300 units of free electricity every month this would translate to benefits of ₹15,000-18,000 annually for households from free solar electricity, and selling of the surplus to the distribution companies,” she said in her address.
The average all-India household consumption of electricity is about 100 units a month, say public data. The net-metering policy allows users of rooftop solar power to supply their surplus power back to the grid, thus offsetting their electricity bills.
Govt. announces housing scheme for middle class (Page no. 5)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Providing a boost to affordable housing, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the government would launch a scheme to help “deserving sections of the middle class living in rented houses or slums or chawls and unauthorised colonies” buy or build houses.
In a fillip to rural housing, she said that two crore more houses would be built under the flagship Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY)-Rural. She said that despite the pandemic-induced challenges, the “implementation of the PMAY (Rural) continued and we are close to achieving the target of three crore houses.
Construction of two crore more houses will be taken up in the next five years”. The PMAY is a credit-linked subsidy scheme to facilitate access to affordable housing for low- and moderate-income groups.
Centre to develop three major economic corridors Budget outlay for Railways up by 5.8% (Page no. 6)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
With a thrust on investment in infrastructure, the Union Ministry of Railways has been allocated ₹2.55 lakh crore for the financial year 2024-25, up by 5.8% from last year’s allocation of ₹2.41 lakh crore.
Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that up to 82% of last year’s allocation had been spent by the end of January.
The Budget document says the Railway Ministry could only utilise ₹1.6 lakh crore, based on the actual numbers released for 2022-23.
He said the revised operating ratio for 2023-24 was 98.7%, which is the ratio of working expenses to traffic earnings. All expenditure for pension is being borne from railway revenue.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the Centre will implement three major economic corridor programmes — energy, mineral, and cement corridor, also being referred to as Energy Economic Corridor; port connectivity corridor aka Rail Sagar; and high-traffic density corridors, aka Amrit Chaturbhuj.
Text & Context
On Israel’s obligation to prevent genocide (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In a historic ruling, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to take measures to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza, but stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire as requested by South Africa.
A final verdict can only be pronounced after hearings on jurisdictional challenges and the merits of the claim are concluded, which will likely take several years.
However, ruling strongly indicates that the judges believe that there is a “plausible” genocidal risk to Palestinians, thereby clinching an undeniable victory for South Africa.
As established in the Court’s LaGrand judgment in 2001, such provisional rulings are binding, and non-compliance entails the breach of an international legal obligation.
However, whether Israel will choose to abide by the ruling is debatable since the ICJ does not have an enforcement mechanism of its own. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the ICJ ruling as “outrageous” while underscoring that Israel is fighting a “just war like no other.” He reiterated the claim that Israel is defending itself against Hamas.
Editorial
Interim Budget 2024 — in campaign mode (Page no. 16)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Well before Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman rose to present the Interim Budget for 2024-25, there were indications as to what its focus would be.
Doubts that this would be anything more than a vote-on-account had been settled when Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly declared that “when polls are this close, the government presents an interim budget” — and went on to say with confidence of a victory in the polls, “we will bring a full budget when a new government is formed”.
Meanwhile, an ‘interim Economic Survey’, innocuously titled “The Indian Economy: A Review”, has presented a survey of post-Independence economic development, with a periodisation that divides those years into the pre- and post-Modi government eras.
In language reflective of an electioneering pamphlet, peppered with the Prime Minister’s own assessments of his government’s record, the document concludes that the decade 2014-24 was one of “transformative growth”.
Periods of significant or even high episodes of growth prior to that transformative decade are identified as wanting, on the grounds that such growth either left structural challenges unaddressed or was the result of an unsustainable credit boom that damaged the banking sector.
Opinion
Ignoring an agricultural sector in distress (Page no. 17)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
The report released by the Finance Ministry and the vote-on-account presented by the Finance Minister are concerned more about portraying a glowing image of the government than about the financing plans for 2024-25.
For the same reason, one is constrained to confine the discussion on the Budget to one question: was the distress in agricultureover the past decadealleviated by policy, or has it been exacerbated.
All official data appear to indicate the latter. First, there was a strong downward pull on agricultural prices leading to a squeeze on farmers’ incomes.
The sectoral deflator in agriculture and allied sectors — estimated as the difference in the growth rates of gross value added in current and constant prices — declined from 9.4 in 2013-14 to 5.0 in 2019-20 and 3.7 in 2023-24.
News
Space gets nominal hike, likely boost for spaceflight start-ups (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
With no major space missions slated for 2024, the Department of Space has received only a nominal increase of 4% in its allocation in the interim Union Budget for 2024-25, from ₹12,545 crore to ₹13,043 crore.
The Indian space programme will spend much of the year on pre-launch testing milestones for the lunar exploration (Chandrayaan), human spaceflight (Gaganyaan) missions, and some other projects.
In 2023, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched and successfully executed its long-awaited Chandrayaan-3 mission.
The ISRO also launched the Aditya-L1 mission to study the sun and the XPoSat — short for ‘X-ray Polarimetry Satellite’ — mission to track and study neutron stars and black holes from space.
India also signed the Artemis Accords to participate in the U.S. multilateral programme to return humans to the moon by 2025.
India increasing allocation for Maldives, ₹400 crore revised to ₹770.9 crore (Page no. 18)
(GS Paper 2, International Relation)
India’s neighbourhood received a substantial share of the annual allocation for the Ministry of External Affairs in the interim Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
Out of all the countries in the neighbourhood, Bhutan has received ₹2,398.97 crore as allocation for the current fiscal year, while Nepal has come second with ₹650 crore for various development projects currently under way in the Himalayan country. For 2024-25, Nepal has received an allocation of ₹700 crore.
The Maldives, which has been in the news recently because of anti-India protests and remarks from its top leadership, has seen a substantial bump in allocation.
The allocation for the Maldives for 2023-24 was ₹400 crore which went up to ₹770.9 crore this time. This indicates that India is increasing investments in the archipelago nation.
Govt. to consolidate the demand of three Services in defence allocation (Page no. 19)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
In a significant measure to bring jointness in the procurements of the armed forces, the government has decided to consolidate the demand of the three Services in the capital head of the defence budget based on similar items of expenditure such as land, aircraft and aircraft engines, heavy and medium vehicles and others.
In the interim Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, there was no significant change in the allocation for defence with the total allocation for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) standing at ₹6.2 lakh crore for 2024-25.
This will bring flexibility in financial management by enabling the MoD to reappropriate the fund among the three Services keeping in view the inter-services priority.
World
EU agrees on new 50 bn-euro aid package for Ukraine despite Hungary’s veto threat (Page no. 20)
The leaders of the 27 European Union countries sealed a deal on Thursday to provide Ukraine with a new €50 billion ($54 billion) support package for its war-ravaged economy despite weeks of threats from Hungary to veto the move.
European Council President Charles Michel announced the agreement that was reached in the first hour of a summit he was chairing in Brussels.
We have a deal,” Mr. Michel said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. He said the agreement “locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for Ukraine,” and demonstrated that the “EU is taking leadership and responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake.”
Science
A touch of sun: the impact of heat events on children (Page no. 24)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
There is sufficient evidence to show global warming is causing temperatures across the globe to rise significantly enough to cause disruptions.
Heat waves are occurring with greater frequency and are lasting longer than ever before, with the World Meteorological Organisation declaring that 2023 was the hottest year on record.
While humans have adapted and acclimatised themselves to several variations in climate, there is believed to be a limit beyond which our bodies cannot process this change.
The correlation between health outcomes and environmental conditions is something that has been broadly hinted at, but not studied in detail. It is about time to do that.
The first of a series, this working paper from the Early Childhood Scientific Council on Equity and the Environment, Harvard University, (Extreme Heat Affects Early Childhood Development and Health: Working Paper No. 1., 2023) explores how extreme heat can affect young children’s biological systems and disrupt development, as well as the many ways it can amplify the effects of systemic inequities.