By Dipak Kurmi
The Union Budget 2026–27, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, signals a clear inflection point in India’s economic narrative, marking a transition from declaratory ambition to systemic execution. Anchored in the long-term vision of Viksit Bharat 2047, the Budget articulates a coherent framework built around three Kartavyas: accelerating growth and competitiveness, empowering citizens through skills and participation, and ensuring inclusive development. What distinguishes this Budget from several of its predecessors is not merely the scale of allocations but the architecture it seeks to build—platforms rather than pilots, ecosystems rather than isolated schemes. In doing so, it recognises that India’s next phase of growth will depend less on incremental reforms and more on rewiring institutional, financial, and digital infrastructure to unlock productivity across sectors.
One of the most consequential interventions lies in the reimagining of MSME finance through a robust asset-backed ecosystem. The creation of a ten thousand crore SME Growth Fund, enhanced allocations to the Self-Reliant India Fund, mandatory onboarding of Central Public Sector Enterprises on the Trade Receivables Discounting System, credit guarantees for invoice discounting, and the integration of GeM with TREDS collectively represent a structural reset of MSME credit delivery. Most critically, the introduction of Asset-Backed Securities to enable a secondary market for receivables moves MSME finance away from relationship-driven lending toward data-led liquidity. By allowing receivables to be treated as trusted, tradable financial assets, the Budget opens the door to fintech-led marketplaces that can deploy artificial intelligence for risk assessment, blockchain for invoice authenticity, and digital identity frameworks for trust. This transformation has the potential to unlock speed, scale, and resilience in MSME credit, addressing one of the most persistent bottlenecks in India’s growth story.
Beyond urban enterprises, the Budget makes a compelling case for traceability as a form of economic infrastructure, particularly for agriculture and rural MSMEs. By strengthening the One District One Product programme and creating pathways for its integration with blockchain-enabled provenance systems, the Budget envisions a future where products such as coconut, cashew, textiles, and other agri-linked goods carry verifiable data trails from farm to market. Such traceability enhances price discovery, improves export readiness, ensures compliance with increasingly stringent ESG norms, and facilitates access to formal credit for producers who have traditionally operated at the margins of the financial system. Given that agriculture continues to support nearly forty-five percent of India’s workforce, this shift is not merely technological but social in its implications, enabling farmers and rural youth to participate meaningfully in national and global value chains rather than remaining price-takers in opaque markets.
The next leap in farmer income, as the Budget implicitly acknowledges, will not come from subsidies alone but from the convergence of Agri-AI, supply-chain transparency, digital marketplaces, and emerging agri-carbon credit platforms. Precision agriculture powered by data analytics, real-time market access through digital platforms, and monetisation of sustainable farming practices via carbon markets represent areas ripe for innovation. By embedding these possibilities within a broader policy framework, the Budget positions rural India not as a passive beneficiary of welfare but as an active participant in a technology-enabled growth cycle. This approach aligns with the larger objective of inclusive development, ensuring that digital transformation does not remain confined to metropolitan centres but permeates the countryside where demographic and economic stakes are highest.
Sustainability emerges as another defining pillar of the Budget, particularly through the proposed twenty thousand crore outlay for Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage across five key sectors. This allocation signals long-term seriousness toward India’s net-zero commitments and its role in global climate action. Yet the Budget also implicitly recognises that capital expenditure alone will not deliver scalable climate outcomes. The effectiveness of carbon markets will hinge on credible digital Measurement, Reporting, and Verification systems, AI-driven optimisation of emissions reduction, and tokenised carbon assets that can ensure transparency and monetisation. In this context, the Budget creates fertile ground for startups and enterprises operating in carbon accounting, ESG compliance, and climate fintech, positioning India not only as a climate solutions market but also as a global provider of carbon infrastructure technologies.
On the global stage, one of the most striking signals from Budget 2026–27 is the tax holiday extended until 2047 for global cloud service providers serving international clients using Indian data centres. This move strategically positions India as a trusted global digital infrastructure hub, aligned with the imperatives of data sovereignty, resilience, and scale that underpin artificial intelligence, fintech, and digital public infrastructure. When viewed alongside parallel investments in the Anusandhan National Research Foundation, IndiaAI, quantum computing, and frontier technology research, a clear strategic shift becomes evident—from a services-led economy toward one anchored in intellectual property, innovation, and deep technology. While India continues to trail the United States and China in R&D intensity and patent generation, the foundations laid by this Budget are designed to close that gap over the long term.
Crucially, the Budget’s success will not be measured by allocations alone but by its capacity to translate intent into execution. It calls for convergence among policymakers, banks, fintech firms, startups, researchers, and global partners to build interoperable, trusted, and scalable digital systems. In this ecosystem, platforms such as IFIF 2026 assume particular significance as execution bridges capable of moving ideas beyond pilot stages. By showcasing real-world use cases, enabling asset-backed MSME marketplaces, demonstrating traceable agricultural and MSME supply chains, and advancing frameworks for artificial intelligence, blockchain, carbon markets, and digital trust, such forums can help operationalise the Budget’s vision. The broader promise of Budget 2026–27 lies in its recognition that India’s path to Viksit Bharat 2047 will be forged not through isolated schemes but through integrated infrastructures that empower MSMEs, farmers, and youth, building a resilient, inclusive, and globally competitive economy for the decades ahead.
(the writer can be reached at dipakkurmiglpltd@gmail.com)
