The Union Budget presented on February 1, marks a subtle but significant chromatic shift with a clear policy thrust towards creativity, culture, and capital
For decades, India’s economic imagination has been painted largely in steel grey and silicon blue—factories, highways, data centres, and dashboards. Culture, meanwhile, was expected to perform its civic duty quietly: entertain, preserve tradition, and occasionally impress foreign dignitaries. The Union Budget presented on February 1, 2026 marks a subtle but significant chromatic shift. With a clear policy thrust toward the Orange Economy, the government has acknowledged that creativity is not a decorative flourish on development, but one of its most productive engines.
The Orange Economy—encompassing animation, visual effects, gaming, comics, design, digital media, and the wider creator ecosystem—has long thrived in India despite policy neglect rather than because of state support. Millions of young Indians already participate in it informally, armed with little more than laptops, imagination, and precarious Wi-Fi. What the 2026 Budget does is give this sprawling, youthful, and restless sector something it has lacked: institutional legitimacy. And in India, legitimacy is the first step toward scale.
At one level, this recognition is long overdue. Globally, creative industries generate over $2 trillion annually and employ more people than many traditional manufacturing sectors. India, with its demographic advantage and cultural depth, is unusually well placed to capture a far larger share of this value. Yet until now, public policy treated creative work as an occupational afterthought—something one pursued either after engineering or in quiet defiance of it. The Budget’s emphasis on the Orange Economy suggests a welcome departure from this hierarchy of “serious” and “soft” labour.
From metros to margins: A new geography of work
The centrepiece of this shift is the strengthening of the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) and its expanded mandate to seed AVGC (Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, Comics) Content Creator Labs across thousands of schools and hundreds of colleges. This is not merely an education reform; it is a statement about what kinds of skills the Indian state believes will matter in the coming decades. By introducing animation, gaming, and digital storytelling tools at the secondary and undergraduate levels, the Budget tacitly accepts that creativity, like coding, is a skill that can be taught, refined, and industrially deployed.
More importantly, it acknowledges a truth that policymakers often resist: that the future of employment will not be absorbed entirely by factories, offices, or government recruitment notifications. The AVGC sector alone is projected to require millions of skilled workers by 2030, and unlike many capital-intensive industries, it is labour-absorbing, youth-friendly, and geographically flexible. A talented animator in Imphal or a game designer in Kolhapur is no less viable than one in Mumbai or Bengaluru, provided the eco-system exists. The Budget’s promise lies precisely in this decentralising potential.
This is where the Orange Economy becomes more than a sectoral initiative; it becomes a spatial and social equaliser. Creative industries do not demand proximity to ports or mineral belts. They demand skills, platforms, and intellectual property protection. If implemented well, the Budget’s push could allow India’s Tier-II and Tier-III cities to participate meaningfully in global cultural production, rather than merely supplying labour to metropolitan cores. That, in policy terms, is no small achievement.
Design, soft power, and the politics of value
The Budget’s support for design education, including the expansion of National Institute of Design capacity, further reinforces the idea that creativity is foundational, not ornamental. Design thinking today underpins everything from manufacturing competitiveness to digital governance and urban planning. Countries that dominate global markets do so not merely by producing cheaply, but by producing distinctively. India’s chronic weakness has been value capture rather than value creation; nurturing design and creative capabilities is one way of correcting that imbalance.
There is also an unmistakable soft-power subtext to this push. India already exports stories, music, aesthetics, and digital personalities, often without strategic coordination or economic return proportionate to their influence. The Orange Economy, properly cultivated, can turn cultural presence into cultural power with revenue streams attached. In an era where geopolitics increasingly intersects with platforms, narratives, and attention economies, this is not cultural indulgence; it is strategic foresight.
That said, a Budget speech does not a creative revolution make. The real test will lie in execution. India’s policy history is littered with institutions that looked visionary on paper and languished in practice. Creative education cannot be reduced to token labs or sporadic workshops. It must be integrated into curricula, aligned with industry standards, and connected to clear pathways of employment and entrepreneurship. Without this, the Orange Economy risks becoming another aspirational phrase circulating PowerPoint presentations.
Equally crucial is the question of intellectual property and monetisation. Indian creators are prolific, but often poorly protected and weakly compensated. If the state is serious about treating creativity as economic activity, it must strengthen IP awareness, simplify compliance, and facilitate global market access. Otherwise, India will continue exporting talent while importing value.
From imagination to income
The 2026 Budget does not resolve these challenges—but it does something perhaps more important: it signals intent. By giving the Orange Economy a budgetary fillip, the state has acknowledged that India’s future growth will not come from concrete alone, but from content; not only from infrastructure, but from imagination. In a country where young people are already creating at scale, policy support can mean the difference between precarious hustle and sustainable livelihoods.
If followed through with seriousness and sensitivity, this creative turn could reshape India’s economic narrative. After all, in a world saturated with products, it is stories, symbols, and experiences that command premium value. For once, the Budget seems to agree.
(Sainandan S Iyer is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Dhempe College of Arts & Science, Panaji.)
