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Budget 2026: The World Economic Forum estimates Non Communicable Diseases could cost India $4.58 trillion between 2012 and 2030. Budget 2026: As India charts its journey toward Viksit Bharat 2047, the focus rightly shifts from short-term growth to long-term economic endurance
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Budget 2026: The $4 trillion case for microbiome infrastructure
Budget 2026: The $4 trillion case for microbiome infrastructure
Budget 2026: The World Economic Forum estimates Non Communicable Diseases could cost India $4.58 trillion between 2012 and 2030.
Budget 2026: As India charts its journey toward Viksit Bharat 2047, the focus rightly shifts from short-term growth to long-term economic endurance. Budget 2026 occupies a critical position in this arc: it must lay the biological foundations for the next two decades of national productivity. For India to fully realise its demographic dividend, its workforce must be biologically resilient.
India faces an urgent metabolic crisis with direct economic consequences. The national disease burden from non-communicable conditions linked to diet is spiralling. The World Economic Forum estimates Non Communicable Diseases could cost India $4.58 trillion between 2012 and 2030. Fatigue and cognitive issues manifest not in hospital stats, but as lost output. To grow sustainably, India's "Gut-DP"-the digestive and metabolic capacity underpinning daily output-must be protected as a strategic national asset.
This is a global competitiveness variable. While the US and EU pour billions into microbiome research, India can leapfrog them by leveraging its unique public infrastructure and indigenous biodiversity.
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Budget 2026 must pull three critical levers:
1. The Clinical Substantiation & Public-Private Trial Credit
Small biotech startups are trapped by the Rs 30L-Rs 2Crcost of human trials. The Budget should introduce a Clinical Substantiation Credit: for every rupee spent on registered and successful Phase II/III trials, firms receive a credit redeemable against future GST liabilities, with a 5-year sunset clause to ensure fiscal prudence and urgency.
This must be powered by a mandatory Government-Startup-CRO Partnership. By formalising trial partnerships within India's robust government medical colleges and hospitals, we ensure access to diverse cohorts and vital data infrastructure. This transforms public healthcare into a high-tech R&D engine, positioning India to build the world's largest, most relevant microbiome dataset for therapeutic discovery.
2. Microbiome Industrial Policy & Biological Sovereignty
We need a new FSSAI category for "Medical-Grade Functional Foods," supported by mandatory Indian-specific clinical data. Granting this category "Infrastructure Status" will provide priority lending and lower power tariffs. This drives massive Import Substitution: India can stop importing Western supplements based on non-Indian gut profiles and start exporting potent, indigenous solutions using Indian strains, Indian crops and Indian science. FSSAI and Department of Biotechnology (DBT) form a joint task force to define the "Medical-Grade Functional Foods" category within the first 100 days of the new budget cycle.This aligns perfectly with the Atmanirbhar Bharat mission for biological self-reliance.
3. Gut-Health as a CSR Pillar for National Productivity
Budget 2026 must expand CSR eligibility to include "Employee Metabolic & Gut-Health Infrastructure"for the entire corporate hierarchy.
Moving beyond generic check-ups, this would allow companies to use CSR for deep gut-microbiome screening and preventive metabolic interventions for everyone-from the boardroom to the shop floor. By democratising access to precision wellness, we shift the preventive healthcare burden from the exchequer to corporate balance sheets, directly boosting the national execution capacity crucial for our growth model.
Viksit Bharat 2047 requires a strategic hedge against the $4 trillion NCD loss. Budget 2026 is the moment to shift from sick-care to gut-care-securing our Gut-DP for GDP.
(The author of this article is Shishira Bhowmik, Clinical Researcher (Imperial College London) & Founder of The Gut Odos)
Source: ZeeNews
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