-The Indian Express   Three weeks before Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai was stopped from travelling to London where she was to speak on the alleged violation of forest rights of tribals in the Mahan coal block area of Madhya Pradesh, the Ministry of Environment and Forests asked the Ministry of Coal not to auction the block as it is "located in inviolate forest area". Pillai was stopped at Delhi airport on January 11...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has downsized its FIRst large-scale initiative for women, trimming the plan for a rape crisis centre in every district to one centre per state and Union territory. Union women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi had suggested 660 Nirbhaya Centres - one each in the 640 districts and another 20 in the six metros. Now, there will be just 36, their locations decided by...

Quite opposite to the top-down model of budgeting, the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party-led Government in Delhi has decided to go for a 'citizen-centric' budget planning at 'mohalla'-level for the fiscal year 2015-16. Drawing lessons from the success stories of participatory budgeting conducted at municipal-level in cities like Porto Alegre (Brazil), the AAP-led Delhi Government has decided to launch this form of decentralized budgeting on a pilot basis in a...

-FIRstPost.com Abhijit Sen, part-time member of the Planning commission, has openly criticised some of the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, particularly with respect to the ones on sharing of taxes to state governments. The dissent note was carried in the report of the commission tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. "The recommendations regarding devolution and revenue deficit grants are bound to disrupt existing plan transfers, with likely very serious effects in the...

-The Hindu The government's FIRst full year budget is an excellent chance to recognise missed opportunities and take corrective action with regard to investing in addressing gender inequality The coming Union budget is significant for at least two reasons: FIRst, this will be the new government's maiden full year budget. Second, with the NITI Aayog replacing the Planning Commission, the government is likely to abolish the distinction between plan and non-plan budgets. This...