Five archaeological sites in the country will soon be developed as iconic sites with on-site museums, proposes the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during the 2020 budget speech. This includes 3 sites in the North, one in the North East and one in the South of India.
The sites are — Rakhigarhi in Haryana, an Indus valley civilisation site, Hastinapur in Uttar Pradesh, which is believed to be the capital of the Kuru Kingdom, according to the Mahabharata, Sivasagar in Assam, a lake which was built by the Ahom king Siva Singha, Dholavira in Gujarat, where the ruins of the Indus valley civilisation were found and Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu, which is 15 kilometres away from the capital of the Pandian Kingdom.
Apart from these the minister also proposed to set up a tribal museum in Ranchi in Jharkhand, an Indus Valley civilisation maritime museum in Loktak and a Harappan civilisation maritime museum in Ahmedabad. The Ministry of shipping will be in charge of the maritime museums. The budget also proposed to provide Rs 3,150 Crore to the Ministry of Culture.
The Finance Minister kicked off the Union Budget Session on February 1, 2020 at 11 am.
This budget is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second opportunity in seven months to refresh policy priorities to support an economy on a downward spiral. The Economic Survey that was released on January 31, a day before, projected India's economic growth at 6 per cent to 6.5 per cent in the next financial year starting April 1, saying growth has bottomed out. The growth in 2020-21 compares to a projected 5 per cent expansion in 2019-20.
Weak global growth impacting India, as well as investment slowdown due to financial sector issues, had led to growth dropping to a decade low in current fiscal, said the survey, adding 5 per cent growth projected for 2019-20 is the lowest it could fall for now.
The survey that sets the premise of the Union Budget, said that along with efforts for generating additional employment, special focus has been on improving quality of jobs and formalisation of the economy. The share of regular wage or salaried employees has increased by 5 percentage points from 18 per cent in 2011-12 to 23 per cent in 2017-18. In absolute terms, there was a significant jump of around 2.62 crore new jobs with 1.21 crore in rural areas and 1.39 crore in urban areas in this category.
The survey also introduced Thalinomics to Indians — the affordability of Thalis vis-à-vis a day’s pay of a worker, which has improved over time, indicating improved welfare of the common person. The survey stated that the affordability of vegetarian Thalis improved 29 per cent from 2006-07 to 2019-20 while that for non-vegetarian Thalis by 18 per cent.
