India Announces World's Largest Health Programme

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget 2018-19 in the Parliament on Thursday, where he had a challenge to not just realise the 'New India' dream by spurring growth, but also meet expectations of millions of people and different sections of society and businesses of the country.
World's largest government-funded health programme - 'National Health Protection Scheme' was announced. It will cover 10 crore poor and vulnerable families by providing upto Rs 5 lakh per family per year. The government will launch 'Revitalising of Infrastructure and Systems in Education' by 2022 with a total investment of Rs 1 lakh crore in next 4 years.
This budget is significant as it was Modi government's fifth and final full budget. It is also the first one after GST implementation. Clearly, the focus is on low-cost farming. He said besides 'ease of doing business', the government is also focusing on 'ease of living' now. “
Higher Minimum Support Price of all crops shall be increased to at least 1.5 times that of the production cost.Hardwork of farmers resulted in a record production of more than 275 million tonnes of food grain and about 300 million tonnes of horticultural produce,” FM  said.
The Finance Minister expressed hope that economy will grow at 7.2 percent to 7.5 percent in the second half of 2017-18. He exuded confidence that India is on track to grow at 8 percent.
He proposed to raise institutional credit for agriculture to Rs 11 lakh crore for 2018-19. National Livelihood Mission allocated Rs. 5,750 cr in 2018-19.
Bamboo is green gold and restructured National Bamboo Mission will be launched with an allocation of Rs 1,290 crore to promote bamboo sector in a holistic manner, Jaitley said.
Air Pollution in Delhi NCR is a cause for concern, special scheme will be implemented to support Govts of Haryana, Punjab, UP and Delhi NCT to address it and subsidize machinery for management of crop residue, FM said.
By 2022, every block with more than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal people will have 'Ekalavya' school at par with Navodaya Vidyalas.
Government plans to construct 2 crore more toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission, he informed.
Jaitley said the government has successfully implemented series of structural reforms as a result of which India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. He said FDI has gone up and Indian economy is now a 2.5 trillion economy.