Union Budget 2021-22(Innovation)

-Aditya Singhal

The finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in the recent budget meeting that the center
would be allotting ₹ 50,000 crores, over 5 years to the National research foundation outlay to
strengthen the overall research ecosystem with a focus on national-priority thrust areas.
The NRF was earlier discussed in the last budget before the NEP and is finally launched
in this year’s budget. It is an umbrella body that can fund research across many
disciplines for all the streams. It can also build research capacity at universities and
colleges involving expert researchers from all over the country. It will help increase
productivity in all the streams that are left behind like the archaeological department is
not that advanced as our science department but setting the NRF will help such sectors to
evolve and compete in the world. Being in charge of creating new facilities in universities
and colleges will help focus on colleges with specific problems and work towards solving
them and will also help to get the best knowledge with world-acclaimed teachers from
across the country.

₹ 1,500 crores were proposed to promote digital modes of payment. UPI transactions witnessed
a continuous rise, clocking close to 2.3 billion transactions in January, up from 2.23 billion in
December. As in this new era of modernization, the digital sector has grown immensely. In this
year of pandemic, people started using the digital mode of payment more than the hand-to-
hand cash on delivery which led to more use of such payment handles like UPI and Paytm. By
investing in this sector, the government has tried to give a boost to the digital sector and attract
more foreign investors and in turn, make more FDI. This step will also help popularize Indian
campaigns like Digital India and Make in India which has been going on for 7 years now.

To increase productivity and help in functioning, the National Language Translation

Mission (NTLM) will be launched to make governance-and-policy related knowledge
available in major Indian languages. The announcement was made to help the growing
demand for accessing online services in local Indian languages. This will help every part
of the country to gain access to the recent information regarding legislation, the new laws
passed, etc.

Many reforms took place in the space sector like PSLV-CS51will be launched by
the New Space India Limited (NSIL) carrying Brazil’s Amazonia Satellite and some
Indian satellites and as part of the Gaganyaan mission, as Gaganyaan-2 was unable to
achieve its ultimate goal which was to send the astronauts to space and bring them back
to earth safely, Gaganyaan-3 will achieve the previous goal in addition to sending 4
Indian astronauts in the space for 3-7 days within a 400-km orbit. these astronauts are
currently being trained on Generic Space Flight aspects in Russia. the first unmanned
launch is slated for December 2021.
₹ 4,000 crores over five years have been allotted for Deep-sea Ocean Mission survey
exploration and conservation of deep-sea biodiversity to save the ocean bio-diversity.
This will help save the depleting reefs near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and
Lakshadweep islands.

In conclusion, the center has been considerate with the innovation and R&D sector in the
union budget 2021-22 and has provided the sector with enough funds to continue the research
and get promising results .