Budget 2024: In her speech, FM Sitharaman recalls PM Modi's ‘Jai Vigyan Jai Anusandhan’ slogan

In her Budget 2024 speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said recalled slogan - “Jai Vigyan Jai Anusandhan” - raised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Bengaluru last year. “Prime Minister (Lal Bahadur) Shastri gave the slogan of “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan”. (Former) Prime Minister (Atal Bihari) Vajpayee made that “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan”. Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi has furthered that to “Jai Jawan Jai Kisan Jai Vigyan and Jai Anusandhan”, as innovation is the foundation of development,” Sitharaman said. The slogan “Jai Vigyan Jai Anusandhan” was raised by PM Modi outside HAL airport after his arrival in Bengaluru in August last year where he visited to meet scientists of ISRO involved in the Chandrayaan-3 Mission. “I could not stop myself as I was not in the country, but I decided to visit Bengaluru first and meet our scientists right after visiting India,” the Prime Minister had said. Soon after attending the 15th BRICS Summit in South Africa’s Johannesburg, PM Modi visited ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network Mission Control Complex in Bengaluru to meet the ISRO team involved in the Chandrayaan-3 Mission. In her Interim Budget 2024 speech, Sitharaman said new age technologies and data are changing the lives of people and businesses. “They are also enabling new economic opportunities and facilitating provision of high-quality services at affordable prices for all, including those at ‘bottom of the pyramid’,” she said. “Opportunities for India at the global level are expanding. India is showing solutions through innovation and entrepreneurship of its people. Research and Innovation for catalysing growth, employment and development,” the Finance Minister said. ‘Golden era for tech savvy youth’ Sitharaman said for tech savvy youth in India, this will be a golden era. “A corpus of rupees one lakh crore will be established with fifty-year interest free loan. The corpus will provide long-term financing or refinancing with long tenors and low or nil interest rates. This will encourage the private sector to scale up research and innovation significantly in sunrise domains. We need to have programmes that combine the powers of our youth and technology,” she said. The Finance Minister also said a new scheme will be launched for strengthening deep-tech technologies for defence purposes and expediting ‘atmanirbharta’. With inputs from agencies