The head of the Manipal-based TA Pai Management Institute (TAPMI) has welcomed the Budget announcements for the education sector by the Union Finance Minister on Thursday.
Madhu Veeraraghavan, TAPMI Director and TA Pai Chair Professor of Finance, said the measures announced for the education sector will go a long way in helping scholars from the IITs and premier research institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) publish their work in top-ranked journals.
Stating that the quality of academic output is quite bad at present, he said the slew of measures announced in the Budget – in particular, investment in research – will certainly encourage scholars to publish their research findings in world-class journals. This is the only way Indian universities can dream of entering the coveted top 100 world university rankings, he said.
Dayashankar Maurya, professor of healthcare management at TAPMI, said that National Health Protection Scheme will bring greater resources and more families into the healthcare system. However, design and implementation will be crucial, given the problems observed in similar government sponsored health insurance programmes and the apprehensions expressed by various reports, he said.
Rajiv V Shah, professor and chairperson (Finance and Strategy Area) of TAPMI, said that support for salaried tax-payers in the form of standard deduction was long awaited. Even if this is offset by the withdrawal of transport and medical reimbursements, there is a marginal benefit occurring to taxpayers. It also reduces the burden on employers to verify the claims of such reimbursements. Probably the LTC and other administratively cumbersome deductions could also have been withdrawn and the standard deduction limit could have been increased accordingly, he said.