Union Budget 2019: India to set up national body to fund research in the country

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, presenting the Union Budget 2019, proposed to establish the National Research Foundation to fund and coordinate research in India. Research scholars in India, protesting for over a year for better stipends, might get some financial relief if the foundation is set up.

The Finance Minister also said that the Gian initiative was started to upgrade level of teaching and was a roadmap to counter challenges. "None of our technological institutions were in top 200 in 2014. But now, there are five in the list," said Sitharaman. "India will be soon a hub of higher education. 'Study in India' initiative will be started for the exchange of foreign student," she added. 

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India's first full-time woman finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her maiden union budget at 11 am on July 5. Sitharaman reached the Parliament an hour ahead of time with the budget document folded in a red traditional cloth or 'bahi khaata' sealed with the government seal. Chief Economic Advisor K Subramanian said that it was a departure from "slavery of western tradition". The red cloth symbolises the 'bahi khaata' traditionally used in every Indian business set up to maintain accounts.

Analysts and the media had predicted that her first budget will be focused on the middle class and the poor and that it will take the SoPs presented in the interim budget by Piyush Goyal in February further. Sitharaman has to deal with income tax exemption slabs, unemployment and form a pro-janta budget with the added task of pulling the country out of a five year low. With former Education Minister Prakash Javadekar promising that the government will try its best to spend 6 per cent of the GDP on education and the PM stressing on the youth development and innovation, eyes are on Sitharaman's budget to bring the change.