-The Indian Express Interim Budget indicates that the government’s electoral strategy is to win over the ‘intermediate classes’ while ignoring the poor. The Narendra Modi government has now carried its penchant for undermining institutions to the national Budget itself. Not only has it treated what should have been an interim Budget, as its tenure lasts barely two months into the new financial year, as a full-fledged Budget, but it has also...

-The Telegraph Check out numbers for transfers to states, GST collections and income tax Finance minister Piyush Goyal tried to make people happy with his maiden Budget ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, but ended up serving on a platter ammunition that chief ministers such as Mamata Banerjee, Arvind Kejriwal, H.D. Kumaraswamy and N. Chandrababu Naidu are likely to make full use of in the hustings. The campaign managers of the opposition parties...

-TheWire.in The new scheme, similar to other programmes launched by the Modi government, shows how divorced Lutyens Delhi is from the dust and grime of real India. The NDA government in its last Budget before the election has announced an ambitious pension scheme for unorganised sector workers. Given its tendency for hyperbole, the scheme is already being touted as the largest pension scheme in the world with 100 million potential beneficiaries. It would...

-The Hindu Allocation for existing scheme slashed The Centre has allocated Rs.500 crore for a new pension scheme for workers in the unorganised sector, even while reducing its allocation for an existing pension scheme by Rs.775 crore. The new scheme, to be called the Pradhan Mantri Shram-Yogi Maandhan, will benefit unorganised sector workers who have a monthly income up to Rs.15,000. It will provide them a monthly pension of ?3,000 from the age...

-The Indian Express The Budget has promised an assured income to farmers, Rahul Gandhi a minimum income guarantee, and Sikkim a universal basic income by 2022. Back in 2016-2017, the Economic Survey said UBI was an idea whose time was ripe for discussion. As that talk picks up in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, The Indian Express parses the debate, starting from India’s only two pilot projects FINANCE Minister...