-PTI Chandigarh: Punjab's farming sector has expressed disappointment over the Union Budget for not taking "pro-farmers" decision to provide much-needed fillip to the state's agriculture which has been suffering with "high" input cost and "lower" output prices. Even the farm experts have also expressed displeasure with the budget for not announcing any financial assistance to Punjab to promote crop diversification as state's wheat-paddy production has reached saturation point, besides taking a toll...

-The Indian Express Benefits of Rs.33,000 crore will flow every year to the accounts of beneficiaries The Union Budget 2015-16 proposes a 10-fold scaling up of direct benefit transfers (DBT) during the next financial year as a key expenditure control MEAsure. The move is expected to lead to accurate targeting of beneficiaries, de-duplication, reduction of fraud and elimination of waste and leakage in public programmes and schemes. The total number of beneficiaries under 35...

-The Indian Express The Union budget is largely about the intentions and policies of the government of the day, as well as the arithmetic of resource mobilisation and allocation to achieve certain ends in the economy. The diagnostics of various economic problems and their probable solutions are generally found in the Economic Survey. The Economic Survey clearly indicates that growth in agri-GDP in FY15 has collapsed to just 1.1 per cent, while...

-Livemint.com Bringing the bulk of the population under a common system of entitlements is the way to reduce leakages The reliability of the public distribution system (PDS) has improved greatly in a number of states that have a reputation for endemic corruption. In states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, where leakages were as high as 50-90% in 2004-05, they are now of the order of 10-25%. This pattern, based on National...

-Hindustan Times The government slashed plan expenditure by about 20% in the 2015-16 budget amid fiscal concerns, hitting spending on social sectors such as education and women's empowerment that were the focus areas of the previous UPA administration. In the 2014-15 budget, Arun Jaitley allocated Rs. 5,75,000 crore for plan expenditure, or money that goes towards creation of productive assets, but could spare only Rs. 4,65,277 crore this time. This is also...