-The Hindu     Move to push this year's expenditure to next fiscal is intended to keep the fiscal deficit within target The Finance Minister of the next government post-elections will have to pay the price for the United Progressive Alliance's (UPA) subsidy and social spend. The Finance Ministry plans to book in next financial year, 2014-15, the expenditure that will be incurred on subsidies during the remaining months of the current fiscal (January-March). ...

-The Hindu There is no disparagement of subsidies in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh because those who attack the social welfare policies of the Congress regard them as examples of good governance by a party of the Right Three propositions dominate explanations of the Congress party's rout, the Bharatiya Janata Party's impressive victory and the Aam Aadmi Party's stunning success in Delhi in the recent Assembly elections. One, that there is a strong...

-Economic and Political Weekly This paper, in two parts, reports an evaluation of existing in-kind food transfers. Part I outlines the dimensions involved, in terms of reach, transfer content and physical leakages, and deals with the impact of these transfers on poverty as officially measured. Part II reports the impact of these transfers on calorie intakes and also discusses some issues regarding the financial cost of these transfers. Contrary to the...

-The Business Standard A Supreme Court interim order says it should not, but the issues involved may not be quite so clear cut Even as the Supreme Court sits to hear arguments on the applicability of the unique identification number, popularly known as Aadhaar, the debate around the unique identification number has already shifted from its success or reach to whether it should be mandatory. In an interim order, the apex court...

-The Financial Express In an article published in this newspaper on September 4, 2013, Surjit Bhalla takes us to task for critiquing his earlier estimates of the cost of the Food Security Bill. Bhalla asserted that subsidy expenditures would more than triple and the FSB would cost the government R3,14,000 crore annually or 3% of GDP. We argued that Bhalla was barking up the wrong tree and that the main things...