Budget 2025-26 Tourism Push and Gyan Bharatam Mission
Why in the news
Union Budget 2025-26 treated tourism as a job-creating sector and set up a mission for India’s manuscript heritage. The Finance Minister’s speech also set out a wider growth vision.
Key facts: tourism
- Skilling: intensive training for youth, with stress on hospitality management.
- Homestays: finance through MUDRA loans to encourage small tourism ventures.
- Connectivity and e-Visa: easier travel between destinations and a smoother e-Visa process for foreign visitors.
- Incentives: a scheme that rewards states based on their tourism performance.
- Top 50 destinations: to be built in challenge mode with states, which provide land for infrastructure such as hotels.
- Spiritual and religious sites get special focus, especially places linked to Lord Buddha.
- Medical tourism: the “Heal in India” initiative, with private partnerships, capacity building and easier visa norms.
Gyan Bharatam Mission
- Documenting and conserving India’s manuscripts together with academic institutions, museums and private collectors.
- A National Digital Repository of Indian knowledge systems for wider sharing.
Budget vision: ‘Sabka Vikas’
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman described the next five years as a rare chance to realise ‘Sabka Vikas’, pointing to India as the fastest-growing major economy after ten years of structural reforms.
| Theme | Details |
|---|---|
| Growth drivers (4) | Agriculture, MSMEs, Investment, Exports |
| Reform areas (6) | Taxation, power sector, urban development, mining, financial sector, regulatory reforms |
| Viksit Bharat goals | Zero poverty, quality school education, affordable healthcare, skilled jobs, more women in economic activity, India as the food basket of the world |
Ten focus areas listed
- Agricultural growth and rural prosperity, Make in India and manufacturing, MSME support, employment-led development.
- Investment in people, energy supply security, export promotion, and nurturing innovation.
Exam angle
- Initiative for medical tourism: Heal in India.
- Mission for manuscripts: Gyan Bharatam Mission.
- Number of destinations under challenge mode: 50.