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Fostering scientific temper and innovation

Fostering scientific temper and innovation


This year’s Budget will be remembered as a ‘People’s Budget’ for its effort to build taxpayer trust and confidence. For the salaried middle class, there were important announcements on tax exemptions and simplification to boost household consumption, savings and investment.

At the same time, the Budget carries important and much-needed structural reforms in infrastructure and capability – investment in industry and technology including a Centre of Excellence for Artificial Intelligence, Industry 4.0 technologies, prioritisation of guidelines for Global Capability Centres, clean energy, green growth and climate action, agriculture and inclusive growth.

The creation of 50,000 Atal Tinkering Labs will aim to foster scientific temper and innovation among our youth. The announcement of five Centres of Excellence for skilling aims to provide industry-relevant training to our youth in support of ‘Make for India, Make for the World’ manufacturing. All of these areas are extremely important for sustainable growth and community development.

On the healthcare front, the Budget has provided for resilience in the infrastructure of the country through several progressive measures to reduce disparities. The establishment of 200 cancer day-care centres in district hospitals in 2025-26, encouragement to medical tourism and ‘Heal in India’, the 130 per cent increase in the capacity of medical colleges, full exemption of basic custom duty on 36 additional life-saving drugs, lowering of duties on six critical medicines, and inclusion of 37 more therapies under 13 new patient assistance programmes across cancer, rare diseases and other severe chronic illness will make life-saving drugs and services far more accessible and affordable to a much larger patient population.

Ahead of the Budget, the Economic Survey 2024-25 was tabled in Parliament. The Survey noted various measures taken in recent years by the Government of India to support the pharmaceutical sector such as the Production-Linked Incentives scheme, approval of CAR-T therapy, waiver of clinical trials of certain new therapies and orphan drugs that are already approved and marketed in notified countries – all of which help expedite availability of new drugs and therapies.

Innovation thrives in an enabling ecosystem – one that brings together funding, talent, infrastructure and collaboration between various stakeholders – to maintain a dual focus on public health as well as cutting-edge treatments. Having established India as a global manufacturing hub in pharma, our aim is not just to promote ‘Make in India’ but ‘Discover and Make in India’ when it comes to innovative drug discovery and manufacturing.

Continued focus

Therefore, while the continued focus on the ₹20,000 crore investment in private sector-driven research, development and innovation announced last year is welcome, there is clearly still an urgent need to increase investment in pharma R&D, in allocation for bulk drug parks, and activating proposals such as Promotion of Research and Innovation in Pharma and MedTech Sector (PRIP) in order not to lose our competitive edge. A version of the Fund of Funds (FoF) announced in the Budget for start-ups will also help attract Venture Capital funds for pharma innovation. Additionally, it would be important to assess whether the funds already invested by the Government in R&D translate meaningfully into innovative products.

The pharmaceutical sector has a key role to play in attaining our vision of ‘Viksit Bharat’ by 2047 with its own ambition of becoming a $400 billion industry by then.





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