Schemes unveiled in FY24 Budget making headway

Small projects in health, agriculture and urban infra rolled out already

- MUKESH JAGOTA

• SOME HAVE REACHED THE IMPLEMENTATION PHASE ALREADY

EXPECTATIONS ARE MUTED over big-ticket announcements or highbudget schemes being announced in the interim Budget on February 1,but the run-up to the Parliament elections could still feature some such.

FE has reviewed the schemes and government programmes rolled out in FY24 Budget, and found that while these did not entail huge additional burden on the exchequer, at least some have reached the implementation phase already.

Health, agriculture, urban infrastructure received special attention in the last Budget, as the government strove to reach the unaddressed areas of those sectors with a view to sparking off a big impact.

One scheme with a small outlay that could have a far-reaching impact on farm incomes, which large parts of population depend on, is Atmanirbhar Clean Plant Programme to boost availability of disease-free, quality planting material for high value horticultural crops.

The outlay for this was just ₹2,200 crore for seven years. Under the scheme, ten centres will be established across India for fruit crops like apple, almonds, walnuts, grapes, citrus, lichi, mango and pomegranate.

The clean plant centres will provide services of disease diagnostic, therapeutics, multiplying of plants and generation of mother plants.They will also maintain foundation plants free from diseases so that nurseries can propagate disease-free planting materials from them.Six locations for the centres have already been identified and all of them are governmentowned and within Indian Council of Agricultural Research premises.