Post-budget comment on B-school Education in India By Director of GIM, Dr. Ajit Parulekar

"There might not be anything specific for B-school education in India but one highlight for me was the talk of the National Data Governance framework. Through this framework, it will allow us to get access to a lot of non-personal, anonymous data. 

Research-intensive institutions will benefit greatly from this because one of the biggest hurdles one needs to overcome during the conducting of research is the lack of data. Other than that, we at GIM, ensure that we contribute substantially towards a green planet so it is heartening to see that the outlay for energy transformation is sizeable and the Government's support towards battery storage. 

Also specific to our healthcare management program, it is no secret that sickle cell anemia has been a challenge in the country. In the past the government has done a lot of work toward combatting tuberculosis in the country and now, they have announced a mission to eliminate sickle cell anemia. They plan on doing a screening of more than 7 crore patients. 

After a long time, there have been revisions in the tax regime. Under the new regime, there is a sizable up for the taxpayers. There continues to be a focus on infrastructure. This year we have the highest-ever budget for railways and the government is also looking at ramping up air infrastructure. 

The only disappointment is that even though there is an increase in the budget for healthcare and education. It is marginal. We've been talking about increasing the healthcare budget to 4% for a long time and it's still at 2.1%. The education budget was 2.8% and it was 2.9%. It's very low for a country that aims to grow fast. We are underspending on healthcare and education by a very large margin."