-The Indian Express The state has failed to create capacities for a timely, reliable, decentralised data regime. The credibility of India’s data systems is under serious threat with the recent controversy over the employment data of the National Sample Survey. While the Census of India and the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) have a good reputation, when it comes to data related to the social sector — health, education, nutrition —...
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Numbers That Count: An Assessment of the Union Budgets of NDA II -CBGA
-Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) The Interim Union Budget 2019-20, the last budget presented by the incumbent government, comes at a time when the economy is beset with myriad problems. Among the various challenges facing the economy, perhaps the most critical are those related to the acute agrarian distress, burgeoning unemployment and slowing down of the economy. While it is true that many of these problems began prior to...
More »The boundaries of welfare -Prabhat Patnaik
-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...
More »Modi Launches a Startling Pre-Election Budget, Massaged by Creative Accounting -Jayati Ghosh
-TheWire.in The aggregate macroeconomic impact of this Budget cannot really be assessed, since the actual fiscal stance is now so opaque. Let’s get one thing clear. This is not an interim Budget, whatever the government finally agreed to call it. The sweeping promises made on both expenditure and taxation fronts are well beyond the limited minor changes that are supposed to be allowed in a vote-on-account or interim Budget. For a government that...
More »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...
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