Health and Wellbeing

There is a substantial increase in investment in Health Infrastructure and the Budget outlay for Health and Wellbeing is Rs 2,23,846 crore in BE 2021-22 as against this year’s BE of Rs 94,452 crore, an increase of 137%.

The Finance Minister announced that a new centrally sponsored scheme, PM AatmaNirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana, will be launched with an outlay of about Rs 64, 180 crores over 6 years.

The main interventions under the scheme are:

1. Support for 17,788 rural and 11,024 urban Health and Wellness Centers
2. Setting up integrated public health labs in all districts and 3382 block public health units in 11 states;
3. Establishing critical care hospital blocks in 602 districts and 12 central institutions;
4. Strengthening of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), its 5 regional branches and 20 metropolitan health surveillance units;
5. Expansion of the Integrated Health Information Portal to all States/UTs to connect all public health labs;
6. Operationalisation of 17 new Public Health Units and strengthening of 33 existing Public Health Units at Points of Entry, that is at 32 Airports, 11 Seaports and 7 land crossings;
7. Setting up of 15 Health Emergency Operation Centers and 2 mobile hospitals; and
8. Setting up of a national institution for One Health, a Regional Research Platform for WHO South-East Asia Region, 9 Bio-Safety Level III laboratories and 4 regional National Institutes for

Vaccines

Provision of Rs 35,000 crore made for Covid-19 vaccine in BE 2021-22.

Nutrition

To strengthen nutritional content, delivery, outreach, and outcome, the Government will merge the Supplementary Nutrition Programme and the PoshanAbhiyan and launch the Mission Poshan 2.0. The government will adopt an intensified strategy to improve nutritional outcomes across 112 Aspirational Districts.

Universal Coverage of Water Supply and Swachch Bharat Mission

JalJeevan Mission (Urban), will be launched for universal water supply in all 4,378 Urban Local Bodies with 2.86 crore household tap connections, as well as liquid waste management in 500 AMRUT cities. It will be implemented over 5 years, with an outlay of Rs. 2,87,000 crore. Moreover, the Urban Swachh Bharat Mission will be implemented with a total financial allocation of Rs 1,41,678 crore over a period of 5 years from 2021-

Also to tackle the burgeoning problem of air pollution, the government proposed to provide an amount of Rs. 2,217 crore for 42 urban centres with a million-plus population in this budget. A voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and unfit vehicles was also announced. Fitness tests have been proposed in automated fitness centres after 20 years in case of personal vehicles and after 15 years in case of commercial vehicles

Physical and Financial Capital and Infrastructure

AatmaNirbhar Bharat-Production Linked Incentive Scheme

PLI schemes to create manufacturing global champions for an AatmaNirbhar Bharat have been announced for 13 sectors. For this, the government has committed nearly Rs.1.97 lakh crore in the next 5 years starting FY 2021-22. This initiative will help bring scale and size in key sectors, create and nurture global champions and provide jobs to our youth.

Petroleum & Natural Gas

Taking note of the crucial nature of this sector in people’s lives, the following key initiatives are being announced:

1. Ujjwala Scheme which has benefited 8 crore households will be extended to cover 1 crore more beneficiaries.
2. The government will add 100 more districts in the next 3 years to the City Gas Distribution network.
3. A gas pipeline project will be taken up in Union Territory of Jammu &
4. An independent Gas Transport System Operator will be set up for facilitation and coordination of booking of common carrier capacity in all-natural gas pipelines on a non-discriminatory open access

Innovation and R&D

The Finance Minister said that in her Budget Speech of July 2019, She had announced the National Research Foundation and added that the NRF outlay will be of Rs. 50,000 crore, over 5 years. It will ensure that the overall research ecosystem of the country is strengthened with focus on identified national-priority thrust areas.

The government will undertake a new initiative – National Language Translation Mission (NTLM). This will enable the wealth of governance-and-policy related knowledge on the Internet being made available in major Indian languages.