Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2026-27 on Sunday, 1 February, against the backdrop of renewed geoeconomic disruptions affecting India. With these pressures likely to spill into the coming fiscal year, the Budget 2026 offers a window into how the Centre plans to respond to pressing challenges. In this five-part series, we use charts to examine the Budget 2026’s response to these pressures across 15 key concerns.
This part looks at education and artificial intelligence (AI). Each topic has a pair of charts—one presenting the context the budget faced and the other showing what the budget delivered.
Skill mismatch
India’s education system is in need of a reset as it continues to prioritize theoretical knowledge over imparting industry-facing skills. This is all the more essential as unemployment among youth remains over three times higher than the all-India average annual figure of 3.2%, even as the labour market gets reshaped by technology and automation. There is a need to provide significant push to upskilling to make the youth job-ready. Even as the skill development ministry’s budget has risen over the years, its actual spending has remained underwhelming, leaving much room for improvement.
Mission AI
AI has become a core pillar of India’s digital strategy, with the launch of the IndiaAI Mission in 2024, positioning AI as national infrastructure. The government has expanded access to computing, datasets, and skilling to support the ecosystem. As AI adoption accelerates, the focus is shifting to execution—particularly scaling data centres, ensuring power availability, and achieving regulatory clarity. This has come amid the government's push for electronics and semiconductors over the past few years. Though the electronics ministry, which is responsible for the AI mission, has repeatedly underspent its budget outlay.