Union Budget 2021 and Economic Growth: Inclusion and Exclusion in Emerging India

Abstract

This note contextualises the ‘choice’ India exercised in her Union Budget 2021. This budget stressed on privatisation and economic growth. As the Indian social structure evolved historically, it came to comprise several communities excluded from mainstream life. Independent India evolved a development trajectory that combined democratic structures with participative decision-making processes buttressed by constitutional provisions in the form of quotas/reservations in legislatures, education and jobs. This trajectory succeeded in forming an elite section from some of the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) communities and from them a techno-managerial elite has emerged who could professionally find a place in the expanding private sector. But the Indian development trajectory has failed in case of the Scheduled Tribes (STs)/indigenous peoples or First Nations category. This failure means that the historical mission of the Indian development trajectory is yet incomplete.