-The Hindu Sluggish health spending can be reversed with a substantial increase in the allocation for health in the Union Budget India’s neighbours, in the past two decades, have made great strides on the development front. Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Bhutan now have better health indicators than India, which has puzzled many. How could these countries make the great escape from the diseases of poverty earlier than their much bigger neighbour? India’s...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Aruna Roy, well-known social and political activist, interviewed by Jipson John and Jitheesh PM (Frontline.in)
-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...
More »Finance ministry has a poor forecasting record -Sharmadha Srinivasan, Prakhar Misra and Niranjan Rajadhyaksha
-Livemint.com Given the over-optimistic revenue estimates and under-budgeted expenditure, the FinMin’s budget projections should be taken with a pinch of salt Dark clouds are gathering over the fiscal horizon. Finance minister Arun Jaitley will table an interim budget on 1 February—just weeks before India goes to polls. There’s a growing consensus among analysts that the government will miss its revenue target for the year, largely because the collections from the goods and services...
More »Prof. Abhijit Sen, a former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, interviewed by M Rajshekhar (Scroll.in)
-Scroll.in The former Planning Commission member explains why the country needs to tread carefully on this idea. On January 1, when Indian news agency ANI asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the government’s plans to reduce agrarian distress, he said loan waivers do not work as a very small segment of farmers take loans from banks. “A majority of them take loans from money lenders,” said Modi. “When governments make such announcements,...
More »Modi govt to announce Rs 4,000 per acre direct transfer, crop loan at 0% in two-fold farm relief; to cost Centre Rs 2.3 lakh crore -Anilesh S Mahajan & Rajeev Dubey
-BusinessToday.in DBT scheme draft requires states to share burden 70:30, but states are in no mood to bear the burden. Centre will likely announce direct benefit transfer (DBT) worth Rs 4,000 per acre per season plus interest-free crop loan up to Rs 1 lakh per farmer in an instant two-fold relief to the farmers, sources in the know told BusinessToday.In. The initiatives will cost the Centre Rs 2 lakh crore towards DBT...
More »