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Days ahead of the Union Budget 2025, everyone who is interested in finance is talking about what the current year’s budget is going to focus on. Based on current circumstances, predictions are flying around spreading anticipations about which sector would get star status and what major updates we will receive this time. As a part of this curious journey, we thought we should backtrack a little and look at our historical data, especially the most recent.
History suggests that three industries have consistently received bigger pieces of the pie across the years: defense, infrastructure, and agriculture. While this is the case, industries like health, education, and social services have been receiving increasing attention over the past few years. This can be seen as an indication of a broader policy shift towards better results in human capital improvement and social welfare.
Defense has been a star student in the budget classroom, getting a lot of attention usually. In the Regular Union Budget of Financial Year (FY) 2024-25, Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been allocated Rs 6,21,940.85 crore (approx. US $75 Billion), the highest among the Ministries. This has repeated itself multiple times, and defense spending has not wavered much so far.
For the financial year 2024-25, Road Transport and Highways Ministry was allocated a budget of Rs 2.72 lakh crore. By December 2024, the ministry’s actual expenditure stood at an estimated Rs 1.75-1.8 lakh crore. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated Rs 11,11,111 crore for infrastructure development in the financial year 2024-25. National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has been the primary benefactor of this investment.
The Indian Railways is next up in line, with about 2,62,200 crores INR allocated to it in the year 2024-25. Most of this investment went into funding capital expenditure involving railway infrastructure.
Additional Read: Expectations for Railways in the 2025 Budget
Agriculture is the backbone of our economy and it received 1.52 lakh crores INR from the 2024-25 year’s budget. This amount was five percent higher than the previous year’s fund allocation. Welfare schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana received a bulk of this investment.
Additional Read: Union Budget 2025: What to Expect for the Agri-Tech Industry?
The healthcare industry received about 90,958.63 crores INR as its share from the budget in 2024-25. Although the majority of this went into infrastructural developments, healthcare schemes like Ayushman Bharat, did receive significant investment so that a vast number of low-income families could make use of health insurance.
Additional Read: Union Budget 2025: What to Expect for Healthcare Sector
Moving on, we arrive at education. This is a key sector, of course, and it received about 1.48 lakh crores INR from the budget for 2024-25. Schemes like Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan and the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya received significant parts of this investment.
The social services sectors received about 13000.2 crores INR in the 2024-25 budget, and this covered several welfare schemes, including welfare schemes for marginalized communities, which were all aimed at better quality of life for economically weaker sections of the society.
Manufacturing and industry sector 1873 thousand crores INR for the year 2023-24 and this was quite higher than the funds allocated in the previous years. This indicates a recent shift in the government's focus towards being more self reliant and being export-centric. The Make-in-India campaign also strengthens this notion.
The digital India initiative received over 20 thousand crores INR in the 2024-25 budget. This program attempts to digitally empower the nation and includes several infrastructure projects in the digital business space.
Sustainability is the buzzword of late, and the Indian government has paid its due attention and allocated over 81 thousand crores INR to environmental protection efforts in the 2023-34 budget. This allocation supports schemes aimed at encouraging ventures invested in green energy, conservation, and environmental protection
Allocations in the Union Budget mirror the strategic priorities of the government and policy goals. Though defense and infrastructure are at the top of the table, the recent budgets have been focusing on health, education, and social services quite clearly. It goes to show that the mode these two go together is through holistic nation-building: growth dipped in social development and sustainability.
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