Post-Budget Webinar on the theme “BUDGET 2021: Atmanirbhar Bharat !!!”

In India, whenever Union Budget is announced, it impacts the lives of Indians in many ways. At times the announcement creates hopes of a brighter years ahead with flourishing economy while some times the mass at large believe that budget has nothing much for the layman. This year’s budget is also no exception. When Honorable Finance Minister, Government of India, Ms. Nirmala Sitharam presented the Union Budget 2021, it created a mixed feelings among Indians. While one part of the nation believed it to be a Budget of hope resulting in bullish stock market indices after announcement, the other section said that the middle class is being betrayed once again. During these hues and cries, what remained the hot topic of discussion in almost all forums of discussion is whether this Budget will be able to catalyse the idea of “Atmanirbhar Bharat” (self-reliant India), the idea which was originally propagated by the Honorable Prime Minister of India, Sri Narendra Modi during his announcement of the first relief package for the revival of Pandemic hit Indian Economy and reiterated by the Honorable Finance Minister during her Budget-2021 speech.

After successfully organizing a pre-budget webinar on the theme “Budget 2021; Expectations & Reality” and conducting a live stream of Budget-2021 for its students, School of Commerce & Economics, KIIT, on 5^th February 2020 organized a post-budget webinar on the theme “BUDGET 2021; Atmanirbhar Bharat !!!”, which is buzzing around. The aim of the webinar is to extensively discuss and deliberate, with distinguished experts from the field, on what was the expectations from the budget, what we got from it, what we could have got and most importantly whether this budget would make India atmanirbhar (self-reliant) in real & if not, where does it lack. Prof. Sangeeta Pawar from Mumbai University and Prof. Amarendra Das from NISER, Bhubaneswar joined as the resource persons of the Webinar.

The program started with an opening remark by Mr. Himanshu Agarwal, KSCE on the Budget 2021 and highlighting how it has been a regular practice of the School to organize seminars on current happenings to make its student market fit.

Prof. P. T. Chaudhary, Professor, KSCE making the welcome address, reiterated how quality education imparted by KSCE makes its student self-reliant contributing towards Atmanirbhar Bharat. Speaking on the topic of the Webinar, Prof. Chaudhary highlighted the focus of Budget-2021 on infrastructure, betterment of rural poor etc. He called on the academia to understand and bust the misconception that has been spread that price of petroleum is going to rise after the announcement of agricultural-cess.

Speaking on the topic, Prof. Sangeeta Pawar discussed on various sectors highlighting what we got and what we missed. Prof. Pawar started her delivery by saying that it was a budget for Recession to Revival.