-The Indian Express Direct income support for farmers is too late, too little The hopes of farmers for a meaningful package from the Modi government have evaporated after the announcements in the Union Budget. The proposed Rs 6,000 annual direct income support to small and marginal farmers is a drop in the ocean. States like Telangana and Odisha have done much better with their Rythu Bandhu and Kalia schemes respectively. After...

-TheWire.in The new vision wants youth to figure out education and skills on their own but still expects them to be the drivers of economic progress. Piyush Goyal, presenting the interim Budget, called it a road map for peoples’ development – a fitting description for an election year Budget. Accordingly, it contained the expected sops to farmers (income support), to the middle class and home owners (increase in income tax and rental...

-Press release by NREGA Watch (Jharkhand) dated 2nd February, 2019 Thousands of NREGA workers across Jharkhand spilled to the streets today to express their anger at the continued denial of their entitlements. In over 30 blocks of the state, workers raised their voice against the abysmal wage rate, acute shortage of work, increasing delays in payment of wages, and violation of several other rights. They also demanded work and submitted grievances...

-The Indian Express The income transfer scheme was the highlight of the Budget. But its success will need deft manoeuvring. Like in each of the previous two years, the run-up to the Budget this year was rife with fears of significant fiscal slippage if the government caved in to political compulsions. And like in prior years, these fears turned out to be exaggerated. The decline in fiscal deficit ratios has indeed...

-Hindustan Times Fiscal prudence has been compromised in favour of pleasing every conceivable vote bank the NDA can appeal to What a difference five years make. In July 2014, when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) unveiled its first full Budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley made clear that the NDA was against “mindless populism”. “India,” he said in a media interaction, “has to make a choice between mindless populism and fiscal prudence…. the...