Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan on Wednesday argued that the Union Budget should be anchored in a clear, long-term strategy aimed at strengthening the economy’s resilience and self-reliance while also sustaining high growth, warning that the global environment is currently in an “extremely dangerous” phase.
Speaking in an interview with PTI, Rajan recalled that although India once followed five-year planning frameworks, annual budgets were never effectively aligned with those broader objectives.
“I think it (Union Budget for 2026-27) should be integrated with a longer-term vision. How do we become more resilient, more independent as an economy, but also fast growing, so that everybody else wants to be friends with India, that requires a fair amount of work, and I am hopeful that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s next budget will take us there,” he said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is scheduled to present the Budget on February 1, with expectations that it will outline reforms to support growth at a time of heightened geopolitical uncertainty.
Rajan described the present period as exceptionally risky for both the global and domestic economy, even as he pointed to emerging opportunities created by heavy investments in artificial intelligence.
“But there is also a lot of danger from becoming too reliant on entities that can squeeze us and make us vulnerable because we do not have a natural market which is nearby, which is rich, that we can supply to other than our own,” he cautioned.
