Col. Anil Pokhriyal

India’s Skilling Challenges by Col. Anil Pokhriyal | Budget Dialogues Expert Session

• Over 37 Sector Skill Councils were promoted from 2010 onwards which was a push for the youth of the country and since then we’ve made some meaningful progress.
• Providing industry experts and industry linkages to the youth is extremely important to help them get on to employment after their training and skilling.
• Vocational training is the need of the hour in India to supplement formal education and improve the employability of young India.
• The current infrastructure facility available in the educational institutions is inadequate considering the huge demand for labour. There aren’t many trained and highly skilled trainers available.

Mr. R. K. Mishra

India’s Internal Security Challenges by Mr. R. K. Mishra | Budget Dialogues Expert Session

• Kautilya has mentioned a different kind of threats to a sovereign nation in his book arthshastra namely: External, Internally aided External, Internal, and Externally aided Internal.
• The first and foremost security challenge that India is facing is international as well as domestic terrorism. A large group of terrorist organizations is continuously targeting our country.
• With the phenomenal growth in information technology, a new dimension has been added to the security challenges which is known as the 5th generation warfare.
• Until and unless we strengthen and upgrade our forces it will be extremely difficult for us to challenge the coming threats in the future.

Mr. Jayant Singh

India’s Defence Challenges by Mr. Jayant Singh | Budget Dialogues Expert Session

• The day and age of large-scale warfares from the 60s and 70s are gone but at the same time, we cannot take our guards down because there are lessons to be learned from history.
• 59% of our defense outlay only goes into the payment of salaries and pensions. Only 9% is allotted for stores and only 23% is reserved for capital acquisition.
• In this era of high-tech warfare including autonomous vehicles, drones, network-centric capabilities. If we have such a low outlay for capital, we’re in for trouble.
• Unity of command to prosecute warfare is needed. Having an integrated command will give us the benefit of the deploying army, air force, and navy assets under a single command.

Mr. Amir Ullah Khan

India Agriculture Challenges by Mr. Amir Ullah khan | Budget Dialogues Expert Session

• Public procurement which has gone up 10 years ago is now starting to decline. And therefore the farmers today are in a situation where MSP that they were accustomed to has been declining.
• Farmer’s income has been stagnant over the past several years and their income can go up only if agriculture prices will go up.
• The ideal situation would have been to open up the agriculture sector certainly and guarantee a very high, reasonable, and remunerative support price.
• Most of the countries spend an enormous amount of money subsidizing their farmers and paying for their social security. We don’t do either of that.

Mr. Akhilesh Jha

India’s Science and Technology Challenges by Mr. Akhilesh Jha | Budget Dialogues Expert Session

• Post GST, states have a very limited scope of putting money into R&D in science and technology and innovation and the pressure is now on the central government to pump in money to these sectors.
• So in the post-GST environment, the central government’s responsibility for creating good assertive infrastructure is phenomenal.
• We should prioritize things so that the projects required for fighting a pandemic and reviving the economy are funded in this financial year and the coming financial year while not stopping the researches which are already going on.
• We should have an STI budget component in our budget for every department so that a portion of the budget should be assigned for R&D.

Dr. Rajni Kant

India’s Healthcare Challenges by Dr. Rajni Kant | Budget Dialogues Expert Session

• The biggest challenge India is facing is emerging & re-emerging infections. Identifying and Eliminating age-old diseases is an important task for the health ministry.
• As per 2017 reports, Health research funding in India was equivalent to 0.09% of the GDP. Whereas the state government funds on health research are almost negligible. Funding needs to be increased.
• Medical Innovations are happening but they are not translating from patent to product development.
• Some of the recent reforms in health research are doing great such as flagship programmes on tribal health, vector-borne diseases, health issues in the north-east, pro-active research on NCDs.

Ms. Prerna Chaturvedi

Challenge of Industrial Growth in India by Ms. Prerna Chaturvedi | Budget Dialogues Expert Session

• The drivers of this new-gen are the change in the way we communicate and change in the way we commute.
• In the last 134 years, there is absolutely no change in the way the world saw transportation. There were only changes in the design and the capacity of the vehicle.
• Electric is the way to the future. Hence, electric energy is the core of Evolet. All our vehicles use electric energy to drive in a very efficient manner.
• The drivers of the change to make your dreams into reality are the four factors: The will to do it, discipline, faith, and belief. When all the four factors are put together there’s nothing that can stop an idea to come true.

Mr. Amay Deshpande

Prof. Amay Deshpande on Farmers Protests and Bills | Budget Dialogues Expert Session

• Farmers in India suffered from various restrictions in marketing their produce. There were restrictions for farmers in selling agri-produce outside notified APMC markets.
• The way the bills are passed created mistrust in the farmers sidelining the positives of the bills such as the opportunity to modernize the Indian agriculture sector.
• It is the responsibility of the government to take the opinions of the farmers and also the states before passing such bills.
• Moreover, the main thing to do to ensure the betterment of the farmers is to strengthening the government market spaces- APMCs and to eliminate the loopholes in them.

Mr. Kartikey Goel

The government should ensure funds are reaching where they are required: Mr. Katikey Goel

• A well-planned budget is of utmost importance for a government to ensure economic stability and growth.
• Our budget has to be planned so that economic growth and stability is maintained in the country.
• Investment and expenditure are some of the important factors contributing to the growth of a nation’s economy.
• The government can encourage people to emphasize more savings and investments by providing tax rebates and subsidies.

Mr. Rohan Mahajan

NYP Budget Session was a great opportunity: Mr. Rohan Mahajan

• We have the largest amount of youth population in the world. So we have to make sure that we channelize it in the right direction.
• There is a trend NYP is following and we’re focusing on finance this time. This is about how you would want your country to actually perform in terms of expenditure.
• In other youth parliaments usually, the budget session is a one-hour session where only the finance minister presents his speech.
• Unlike other youth parliaments here in NYP Budget Session every ministry will get a chance to present their budget and discuss how they want their particular sector in the country to perform.