KSCE Organizes Post-Budget Discussion
Union Budget impacts the lives of Indians in many ways. After successfully organizing a pre-budget webinar on the theme ‘Budget 2021: Expectations Ahead’ and conducting a live streaming of Budget-2021 for its students, School of Commerce & Economics, KIIT Deemed to be University organized a post-budget webinar on the theme ‘BUDGET 2021: Atmanirbhar Bharat’ on 5th February 2021.
The aim of the webinar was to extensively discuss and deliberate, with distinguished experts from the field, on how far the Budget has been able to meet the expectations and, most importantly, whether it would make India Atmanirbhar (self-reliant) in real sense. Prof. Sangeeta Pawar from Mumbai University and Prof. Amarendra Das from NISER, Bhubaneswar joined as the resource person of the webinar.
The program started with an opening remark by Mr. Himanshu Agarwall, KSCE on the Budget 2021. He highlighted how it has been a regular practice of the School to organize seminars on current happenings to make its student market ready.
Speaking on the topic, Prof. Sangeeta Pawar from Mumbai University discussed on various sectors highlighting what we got and what we missed. It is a budget for ‘Recession to Revival’, she said. She highlighted education, health and infrastructure corridor, mentioning about Ayushman Bharat, Atmanirbhar Bharat and infrastructure plan, which will be based on PPP model. She opined that the budget doesn’t have much in store for generating employment, but welcomed the steps taken by the government on opening the insurance sector market and creating infrastructure corridors. She discussed how this budget can help India in becoming Atmanirbhar.
Prof. Amarendra Das from NISER, Bhubaneswar explained why there is a reduction on Reverse Repo rate and spoke about the implication of rule based Fiscal policy of Government and the FRBM Act. He also mentioned about the stabilization process through output, employment and prices. He was a bit sceptical about the financing of the whole budget and focused on the reduction of the budgetary allocation in the field of pension, petroleum, agriculture and allied activities. During his deliberation, he touched upon both fiscal and monetary policy prospects.
Earlier, in his welcome address, Prof. P. T. Chaudhary, Professor, KSCE reiterated how quality education imparted by KSCE makes its students self-reliant and contributing towards Atmanirbhar Bharat. He highlighted the focus of Budget-2021 on infrastructure, betterment of rural poor, etc. He called on academia to understand and bust the misconception that the price of petroleum is going to rise after the announcement of agricultural-cess.
The session was carried forward with a presentation by KSCE students on post analysis of Budget-2021. There was also an open house discussion among all the participants. The webinar ended with a vote of thanks. It was actively participated by the UG and PG students of the School.