-The Hindu The Union government has also decided to resume providing subsidy on cooking gas through direct cash transfers straight into consumers' bank accounts. The Modi government has frozen the budget subsidy for cooking gas at Rs. 20 a kg. This will not mean any increase in price for the consumer right away. However, if international prices were to rise, as they normally do in winter, then the government will be faced with...

-NDTV Hyderabad: New state Telangana's first ever Budget session begins today with some bleak statistics on the table. Nearly 350 farmers have committed suicide in the five months since the state came into being on June 2 this year. Finance Minister Etala Rajender will present the Budget in the Assembly today. The opposition will arrive in the House ready to attack the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti or TRS government on farmers'...

-The Business Standard Most key functions now handled by the finance ministry and other govt departments When Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently extended a Rs 8,000-crore central support for building roads in Jammu & Kashmir, Union Cabinet's approval for the big-ticket announcement came in barely 48 hours. Unlike in the past, the proposal did not get stuck in the corridors of the Planning Commission, a Nehruvian-era body. The Commission, which occupied the centre...

-The Hindustan Times For fiscal prudence and better outcome of public expenditure, the Narendra Modi government is likely to downsize some of the social sector schemes, including the rural job guarantee programme, the biggest grosser of the central funds. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had allocated about Rs. 33,351 crore for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) in his budget this July but many believe that the huge expenditure was not...

-The Telegraph The National Democratic Alliance government is planning to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, had already asked for the employment programme of the MGNREGA under which the state was obliged to provide employment on demand (failing which an unemployment allowance of a specified amount had to be paid), to be downgraded to a mere "food-for-work" programme, where the state...