Reaction To Union Budget 2016-2017

Shekhar Sanyal, Director and Country Head, The IET India

“The Union budget for the year 2016-17 is a pragmatic and progressive effort with education rightly being listed amongst the ‘9 critical pillars’ identified by the FM this year. The enhanced focus on skilling and encouraging entrepreneurial tendencies with the scheme to provide Rs.500 cr for promoting entrepreneurship among SC/ST citizens is a welcome step. The large outlays for skill development will resonate with urgent need of employability among India’s youth. The higher education sector which has been craving for some attention from the government will receive an impetus with a Rs. 1,000 crore financing and 62 new navodaya vidyalayas, and 20 educational institutions to be made par world-class standards.

The IET’s vision is also to build a strong engineering ecosystem in India that contributes to the society in resolving critical societal challenges. We are happy to note that the budget is aligned with our vision and we see immediate opportunity from each section of the society – government, corporate and academia to collaborate for economic development. Digital literacy for 6 crore rural households combined with the promise of 100% electrification will help increase education penetration in Tier- 2 and 3 cities as well. To sum up, the budget is certainly a welcome step for the common masses and in line with the government’s vision to transform India” said Shekhar Sanyal, Director and Country Head, The IET India

Reaction to Union Budget 2016-2017

“The overall Union Budget for 2016-17 is encouraging and a step forward to Government’s ambitious initiatives like Make In India and Digital India programmes. The Government has laid clear emphasis on integrating the effective use of technology across all the strategic imperatives in keeping with the Digital India initiative. This focus on bringing in governance reforms and ease of doing business, while highlighting the need for enhancing educational skills to make India a knowledge based economy will be acknowledged well by the industry. It will provide the much needed impetus to young entrepreneurs to start on their own and improve the overall economy of the nation. The announcement of Digital literacy scheme launching over 6 crore additional rural households is a welcome move. We, at the IET are very positive about the fiscal growth in the long run reflected in this budget and are confident that this will put the adoption of digital technologies across the country on a growth trajectory.” said Dr Rishi Bhatnagar, Chairperson of the IET IoT Panel & President Aeris Communication