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Showing posts from February, 2021

Emigration Is (Not) Bad: Rethinking the Debate

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The Ministry of External Affairs, in a question to the Rajya Sabha, gave a response that over 2 lakh Indians gave up their citizenship in 2024. Since 2022, every year, this is the figure of number of Indians giving up Indian citizenship. The past two to three years in India have seen extensive talk about the number of people moving out and relinquishing their citizenship. People also give a very catchy term for that- "Brain Drain", where intelligent and well-qualified citizens are leaving the country for opportunities elsewhere. Then there is the argument of demographic change, where regions are seeing young people leave for green pastures and old people remain with no one to take care of them. All of them are true and valid points, but there is another side of the debate which we often ignore and miss.  The causes of migration can be broadly categorised as push and pull factors. Only if both of them work together, mass migration usually happen. As we have already discussed m...

Important takeaways from Indian Financial Budget 2021

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On February 1st 2021, the Finance Minister of India, Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman presented the financial budget for the financial year 2021-2022. It was a significant budget this time as the country is going through the biggest pandemic of the century. On 29th January, the minister had submitted the Economic Survey for the year 2020-2021.  Credits- The Indian Wire Challenges to the budget Economic revival  Increase public spending  Employment generation  Fiscal deficit (9.5%) The main takeaways from the budget A major push for digitalisation, as the FM read out the budget from a Made in India tablet. An app was also unveiled for people to know and understand the budget as well.  The speech was just over one and a half hours.  Increase in Health spending for this year at Rs 2.2 lakh Cr and Rs 35,000 Cr for Covid-19 vaccination.  Introduction of PM Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana for improving healthcare infrastructure.  No change in Income tax slabs th...