Budget 2021 expectations: Focus on investing in eco-friending infrastructure
India’s Union Budget 2021 must promote a new social contract that commits to jobs, growth, and sustainability along with a razor-sharp focus on tail risks, like pandemics and extreme climate events that can overturn years of progress in economic growth.
The focus should be on investing in climate-resilient infrastructure and low-carbon technologies, revitalising MSMEs, ensuring food and water security, driving capital to accelerate India’s energy and electric mobility transitions, and exploring innovative financing models for disruptive technological innovation. Each of these opportunities also creates additional jobs.
The resources for these interventions could come from a reform of energy and electricity subsidies, targeting those who need the support while increasing the competitiveness of the industry.
