-Hindustan Times Dehradun: Uttarakhand has not been able to improve its agricultural growth in the past 15 years though the majority of its population and area are still classified as rural and the state government has a record of nearly 100% spending of its budgetary allocations. Hill farming is still awaiting special attention from the government as much of the state’s agriculture budget comes from the Centre and most of the agri-development...

-The Hindu We cannot permit gross inequality-linked deprivation to leave its malign signature on the lives of those who are yet to come. As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of the markets and financial speculation, and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution can be found for the world’s problems. Inequality is the root of social ills. —...

-The Hindu Business Line The Budget’s agriculture focus is welcome, but it could have done better A Budget with a purported focus on agriculture could not have come at a better time. There has been a sharp dip in agriculture output from a trend rate of growth of 4 per cent per annum in the period 2004-05 to 2011-12 to about 1.5 per cent in the next four years, which includes a...

-The Hindu Be it education, health, pensions for the socially vulnerable, distressed farmers, or MGNREGA, the 2016 Union Budget has nothing radical to offer. Appearances can be deceptive. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s emphasis on doubling farm incomes, rural development, and allocations for a battery of impressively named schemes for the social sector may give the impression that the right-wing NDA government has suddenly taken a ‘socialist’ turn. The reality, however, is otherwise. Howsoever...

-The Hindu The belt-tightening requires the poor to pay increased indirect taxes while the cushion of the social sector is consistently taken away from them. There is always a hype around a Union Budget but this time around, the expectations were running sky-high in terms of it being the make-or-break Budget for the Narendra Modi-led government since it happens to be in the middle of his five-year term. I must say at...