Budget 2021 lays immense focus on human capital: Dailyhunt founder Virendra Gupta

The government has laid “immense focus” on human capital in the budget for 2021-22 while also taking steps to make doing business easier, Dailyhunt founder Virendra Gupta said Monday.

Speaking to YourStory after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made her speech in Parliament, Gupta said it was “heartening” to see that the budget focused on human lives and didn’t just offer numbers and statistics.

Gupta, who has rapidly expanded the content and news aggregator app Dailyhunt over the past decade, highlighted a number of measures that Sitharaman announced in her budget speech.

For instance, the budget is easing the tax compliance burden for pensioners, he said.

In her speech, Sitharaman said that senior citizen pensioners who are 75 years of age or above will be exempt from filing income tax returns if the paying bank deducts the full amount of tax payable. This exemption will be made available to such senior citizens who have only interest income apart from the pension income, she added.

Gupta also said that the budget’s focus on infrastructure development and environment-friendly policies like the vehicle scrapping scheme were welcome steps.

Sitharaman outlined several initiatives to ramp up India’s creaky infrastructure in the budget. These include setting up a development financial institution for infrastructure financing. “I have provided a sum of Rs 20,000 crores to capitalise this institution,” she said.

She also announced several infrastructure assets that the government plans to sell as part of efforts to raise funds. These assets include operational toll roads, power transmission projects, oil and gas pipelines, airports and railway assets.

For YourStory's multimedia coverage of Budget 2021, visit YourStory's Budget 2021 page or budget.yourstory.com