-Hindustan Times Less than a day before the Railway budget is presented in the parliament, former railways minister Dinesh Trivedi’s allegations against incumbent minister Suresh Prabhu of “fudging numbers” and concealing facts about the organisation’s financial health have surfaced in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that also charges Prabhu of copying Trivedi’s earlier budget speech. Citing that the current Operating Ratio (every paisa spent against a rupee earned) had reached...

-Livemint.com Overall, we find that social sector investments have in fact increased across all states, except Bihar In February 2015, the Government of India accepted the Fourteenth Finance Commission’s (FFC) recommendation to empower states with greater expenditure discretion. The states’ share in Union taxes, therefore, increased from 32% to 42%. While the move holds the promise to reform India’s centralized, one-size-fits-all approach to financing the social sector, the process adopted by...

-FirstPost.com Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes, in vogue for some time in India now, have surfaced with renewed fervour over the last year and a half. DBT, as the term suggests, is a strategy aimed to electronically transfer price subsidies and benefits provided under various welfare schemes as cash directly into the bank accounts of beneficiaries. The Economic Survey 2014-15 made a strong case for rePLAcing various price subsidies and in-kind transfers...

-TheWire.in We are in a moment when the global economy shows no signs of revival; Russia and Japan are faced with recession, and emerging economies like Brazil and South Africa are in dire straits. There is no silver lining visible as far as domestic industrial growth is concerned. At such a time, all eyes are on Union finance minister Arun Jaitley to see how he PLAns to sustain economic growth that...

-TheHansIndia.com The ongoing drought is fuelling distress migration from districts in Telangana, a trend that was witnessed in the early 2000s. The severe drought conditions for the second consecutive year have led to crop failure, mounting debts, chronic unemployment and failure of the NREGA scheme, especially in the districts of Mahbubnagar, Medak, and Adilabad, forcing large-scale exodus of farmers and others.   The fruits of a people’s movement and the world’s largest anti-poverty...