Our journey to a $5 trillion economy by 2024-25, the vision of which was laid out in the pre-Covid budget in 2019, was severely hampered by the pandemic. Since then, two budgets in 2020 and 2021 have attempted to address the health emergency while minimizing the impact on the economy. Those efforts have yielded results, with the nation tackling the omicron wave in a measured manner, while all GDP forecasts for 2021-22 and 2022-23 have indicated that India will be the fastest growing country in the world. Macro-economic indicators are also positive – growth in revenue receipts and capex, a rebound in merchandise imports and exports, and higher foreign exchange reserves.
against this backdrop, Union Budget 2022 The U.S. has indicated that mere recovery is not enough – India is aspirational, development-hungry and ready for a quantum leap. To support that leap, the Budget has set out a blueprint for the next two and a half decades. In this sense, this budget is an expression of ambition.
That ambition is quite formidable – the extent to which infrastructure and logistics aspects were addressed, water and agriculture focused, manufacturing boomed, MSMEs supported, sunrise sectors identified Clean energy was encouraged, urban spaces were re-imagined and the digital dividend was harnessed, all showing that India’s future will be built on two pillars – strengthening our traditional backbone and models of the future to build
The last two years have highlighted the healthcare sector, and it is indeed to our credit as a nation, that all stakeholders have worked together to fight the pandemic. The fact that we have vaccinated over 1.5 billion people now shields us against any future risks.
However, we really have a long way to go in building health resilience. The Digital Backbone, an open platform of the National Digital Health Mission, will enable universal access for all – and it will truly revolutionize health delivery. A healthy and productive workforce will be the life force of all our plans to build the India of the future. This is going to be a decade of change, which will have a multiplier effect on the economy, and prepare India for the future!
Sunita Reddy, Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group
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