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The Union Budget 2025-26 emphasised climate resilience and agriculture as key priorities.
However, a year later, implementation remains slow and fragmented, with a focus on infrastructure over climate adaptation and rural livelihoods.
The gap between promises and delivery highlights the need for governance to shift from process to performance.
In Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's presentation for Budget 2025-26, climate resilience and agriculture were placed at the heart of India’s development narrative. “Our focus,” she said, “is on building prosperity that is sustainable, inclusive and resilient,” signalling that farms, rural livelihoods and clean energy would anchor India’s response to climate risk.
One year on, the government’s own Status of Implementation of Budget Announcements 2025–26 suggests that while climate and agriculture dominate the language of the budget, they are yet to shape its delivery. Across farming, rural employment and the energy transition, implementation remains slow, fragmented and tilted towards infrastructure and manufacturing rather than climate adaptation, income security or ecological repair.
What emerges is a familiar pattern: climate is invoked as justification, agriculture as symbolism, but execution prioritises factories, credit and physical assets, leaving farmers and rural communities exposed to the very climate shocks the budget promised to address.
At the heart of the rural push was the Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana (PMDDKY). Announcing the scheme, Sitharaman said the government would undertake a “transformational programme for 100 districts with low productivity, moderate crop intensity and below-average credit parameters,” aiming to benefit 17 million farmers.
The Cabinet approved the scheme in July 2025, and it was formally launched in October. District action plans were submitted soon after. Yet most are still under review, with implementation yet to visibly begin in many districts.
The promise of decentralised agricultural revival is undercut by the absence of fiscal autonomy at the district level. Convergence of schemes, repeatedly invoked in the report, has historically meant blurred accountability. The numbers reflect the lag: Only 11 godowns have been constructed under the PACS storage pilot, adding just 9,750 tonnes of capacity nationwide.
For farmers in low-productivity districts grappling with climate shocks, paperwork has yet to translate into protection.
Sitharaman had declared that the Rural Prosperity and Resilience Programme (RPRP) would ensure “migration becomes an option, not a necessity.” The scheme was pitched as a multi-sectoral response to under-employment in agriculture through skilling, technology and investment.
But the implementation report shows the programme is largely stuck in Phase 1 (planning and preparation) till 2027. Concept notes have been approved, consultations held with states and multilateral lenders, and MoUs signed. Actual job creation, however, remains distant.
Where interventions exist, they focus heavily on skilling and entrepreneurship, assuming markets and capital will follow. Missing is a serious push for decentralised manufacturing, public employment or land-based livelihoods that could anchor rural incomes amid climate volatility.
On food systems, the government moved fastest on procurement. Launching the Mission for Aatmanirbharta in Pulses, Sitharaman said, “Central agencies will be ready to procure tur, urad and masoor, as much as offered.”
The Rs 11,440-crore mission is operational: seeds have been distributed, varieties notified, and procurement assured. But critics warn that the approach mirrors the rice-wheat model — price support without ecological guardrails. There is little evidence of water budgeting, region-specific cropping strategies or incentives for diversification beyond the three pulses.
Similarly, the Comprehensive Programme for Vegetables and Fruits, announced to ensure “remunerative prices for farmers,” has yet to be rolled out. After months of deliberation, the government is considering subsuming it under existing horticulture schemes, diluting its original ambition.
Millets (shree anna) have seen procurement gains and processing incentives, but nutrition outcomes, central to their promotion, are not tracked.
Credit expansion runs through the budget like a reflex. Sitharaman highlighted that Kisan Credit Cards serve 77 million farmers and announced that the loan limit would be enhanced from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 5 lakh.
A year later, the increase is still under evaluation. Meanwhile, customised credit cards for micro-enterprises, expanded MSME guarantees and startup funds remain at draft or consultation stages.
For small farmers already burdened by debt and climate risk, credit without income security risks deepens distress. Yet public investment and price stabilisation remain secondary.
Nowhere is the contrast between intent and framing sharper than in the energy transition.
In her budget speech, Sitharaman underscored that “clean tech manufacturing will be a key pillar of India’s climate-friendly development,” listing solar PV cells, EV batteries, electrolysers, wind turbines and grid-scale storage.
On implementation, energy manufacturing has moved faster than almost any other sector. Under PLI schemes, nearly 45 GW of solar cell manufacturing capacity has been awarded. Wind equipment indigenisation has crossed 70 per cent. Battery storage and green hydrogen projects are advancing with clear timelines.
But this is an energy transition imagined almost entirely through factories, exports and industrial competitiveness.
What is missing is just as telling:
No framework for a just transition for coal-dependent regions
No safeguards on land, water and mineral extraction for renewables
No roadmap linking clean energy manufacturing to rural livelihoods
Even the Green Hydrogen Mission, projected as a global export opportunity, prioritises industry over domestic energy access or community benefits.
At the same time, fossil-fuel infrastructure continues to expand. The Rs 10,600-crore urea plant in Assam (cleared swiftly) locks agriculture deeper into fertiliser-intensive systems that strain both the exchequer and ecosystems.
India’s energy transition, as currently implemented, is additive rather than substitutive.
Large physical assets: logistics modernisation of India Post, manufacturing missions, and fertiliser plants have progressed faster than nutrition, employment or climate adaptation schemes. The state remains more comfortable building institutions than measuring outcomes.
Across the implementation report, success is defined by MoUs signed, committees formed, and notes circulated. Absent are indicators on emissions reduction, water savings, soil health, income stability or nutrition.
Budgets are statements of intent. Implementation reports are meant to measure delivery. This one exposes a widening gap between rhetoric and results.
Sitharaman told Parliament that Budget 2025–26 would “lay the foundation for a Viksit Bharat.” Whether that foundation supports farmers, workers and communities facing intensifying climate shocks will depend less on announcements and more on whether governance shifts from process to performance.
One year on, the evidence suggests India is still far better at promising transformation than delivering it.