-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The government decided to bar the telecast of a documentary by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin on the December 2012 Delhi gang-rape, with home minister Rajnath Singh telling Parliament he was "stunned and deeply hurt" when he heard about the controversial interview of one of the convicts. Rejecting a request from India not to telecast the documentary, the BBC aired it in the early hours of Thursday (Indian time). But,...
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Strong on the social sector side -Yashwant Sinha
-The Hindu Budget making is a complex exercise, especially in a country like India. Therefore, the parameters to judge the annual budget are also many. For me, the arithmetic of the budget is the first. According to the statements made by the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister, one expected the fiscal deficit targets to be adhered to. However the Finance Minister has extended it from two to three years....
More »Anaemic allocation leaves healthcare gasping for more -Smriti Kak Ramachandran
-The Hindu Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's announcement of new AIIMS-like institutions, tax sops for those who buy health insurance, and Rs. 33,150 crore allocation has given the health sector little to cheer. Though the draft of the government's new national health policy wants public health expenditure to increase to 2.5 per cent of the GDP, the allocation seems insufficient to meet the government's ambitious universal health assurance mission that includes free...
More »Budget 2015-16 takes a leap towards market fundamentalism: CBGA
-Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) Press Release New Delhi: The direction indicated by the Finance Minister's Budget Speech in general and that of the taxation policies in particular indicate a quantum leap being taken towards market fundamentalism. In the absence of any increase in the overall spending capacity of the government (Centre and States combined), the steps for fiscal decentralization (from Centre to States) have been constrained, implying only...
More »Food Sufficiency in India: Addressing the Data Gaps -S Chandrasekhar and Vijay Laxmi Pandey
-Economic and Political Weekly The National Sample Survey Office's survey of consumption expenditure is woefully inadequate for estimating the number of food-insecure households in India. Future surveys of NSSO need to collect information on the four pillars of food security: availability, access, nutritional adequacy/utilisation and stability. The Comprehensive Nutrition Survey in Maharashtra is an example of such a survey and appears to do a decent job of capturing the different elements...
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