The Union Budget of 2021 was presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament on Monday, and has created history by being India’s first ever paperless budget. With a sustained focus on infrastructure and health, this budget has largely received positive responses so far.

While there was no outright announcement on further investments in AI, what came through was how the government is exploring ways to apply analytics and machine learning in areas like finance, tax evasion; and also wants to enhance the focus on natural language translation for major regional languages.

In her speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA)’s revamped portal version 3.0, MCA 21, will use data analytics, AI and machine learning to make regulatory filings easier for businesses. This will make MCA-21 a ‘single point of information’ and promote ease of doing business, e-adjudication, online compliance monitoring among others.

She also spoke of the extensive use of analytics and AI to weed out entities that have evaded taxes like GST, and that “record collections have been seen so far”. A report in Times of India last month cited that prominent Bangalore-based consumer internet companies evaded GST by relied on fake manpower supply to utilize input tax credit. These findings were credited to data analytics and AI by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence. In addition, a nationwide drive against fake GST invoices has been ably supported by Artificial Intelligence. More than 258 individuals were found availing input tax credit fraudulently, revealed this report. Complete data sharing between GST, customs and income tax, aided by AI and analytics helped revenue department officials weed out these instances of tax evasion.

The National Research Foundation (NRF), an autonomous body envisaged under the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 with the objective to boost research, received an outlay of Rs. 50,000 crore spread across five years.

Another significant announcement was National Translation Mission for regional languages that will focus on dispensing policy and governance-related information on the Internet for major Indian languages. This comes at a time when there has been an exponential increase and demand for regional language support on the Internet in India for consumers and governance alike.

The forthcoming census, the eighth national census in independent India, will be a completely digital one, added Sitharaman.

Other significant developments in the Union Budget include:

Healthcare gets a 137% increase in outlay

India’s health budget witnesses 137% jump – the announced outlay for health is Rs.2,34,836 lakh crore. Separately, Rs. 35,000 crore has been allocated for COVID19 vaccines, and more will be provided if required. An integrated health portal to link diagnostic labs and increased numbers of critical care facilities are part of this proposed healthcare spend. A voluntary vehicle scrapping policy too was announced, in a bid to tackle pollution and presumably pave the way for EVs to enter India.

Entrepreneurs Get A Boost

• Expanding the scope of defining small companies – they will now be ones with a paid up capital not exceeding Rs. 50 lakh and not exceeding Rs. 2 crore, and whose turnover is between Rs. 2 and Rs. 20 crore.
• Setting up One Person Companies (OPCs) without restrictions, paid-up capital or turnover norms, by resident and Non Resident Indians (NRIs). For NRIs, minimum days of residency prior to setting up an OPC has reduced from 182 days to 120 days.
• Extension of tax holiday of one year upto March 31, 2022.
• Capital gains exemption for startup investment extended by another year to March 31, 2022.
• Setting up a world class fintech hub at Gujarat International Finance Tech City