-Press Release from Centre for Budget Analysis (CBGA) and Jan Awaaz New Delhi, 29 November 2014: There have been a number of media reports recently around possible cuts in Union Budget Allocations for the current fiscal 2014-15 in case of social sector programmes, i.e. reductions in allocations in the Revised Estimates (RE) for 2014-15 as compared to the Budget Estimates (BE) that were made in July this year. This issue deserves...
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Job scheme budget-cut plan sparks alarm -Basant Kumar Mohanty
-The Telegraph The finance ministry has decided to shave Rs 3,000 crore, or about nine per cent, off the rural job guarantee scheme's Budget Allocation, government sources told The Telegraph. The move comes at a time the NDA government has been trying to assuage the fears of the Opposition and social activists that it plans to dilute the programme, introduced by the UPA government. This year's Budget Allocation for the programme was Rs...
More »Not curtailing rural job scheme: Government
-IANS New Delhi: The government is not trying to curtail MNREGA and the number of blocks under the act have not been reduced, Rural Development Minister Birender Singh told parliament Thursday. The minister was responding to a calling attention motion in the Rajya Sabha by Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D. Raja and others, criticising the move of the government to introduce changes in the rural employment scheme by reducing the...
More »Social sector funds slashed -Puja Mehra
-The Hindu To meet the fiscal deficit target for this year, the Central government is brutally slashing social sector allocations but is keeping expenditure cuts for the physical infrastructure sectors at a minimum. This re-aligning of plan outlays across sectors by the Finance Ministry is in line with the government's priorities. The Narendra Modi government views infrastructure spending as growth-enhancing and an essential element of its plans for reviving the economy. The...
More »Dangerous withdrawal -Prabhat Patnaik
-The Telegraph The National Democratic Alliance government is planning to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, had already asked for the employment programme of the MGNREGA under which the state was obliged to provide employment on demand (failing which an unemployment allowance of a specified amount had to be paid), to be downgraded to a mere "food-for-work" programme, where the state...
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