-The Hindu The Finance Minister’s prescriptions are a classic case of being unable to see the wood for the trees, be it on the tax proposals, the rural outreach or the bank bailout. It was a marathon achievement: 12,187 words in 111 minutes. True, there were no interruptions; the Finance Minister virtually sent the House to sleep. I have listened to many Budget speeches; and I cannot say that Dr. Manmohan Singh...
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Why the Budget numbers don’t add up -Rohit Azad
-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...
More »Be cautious on new accounting system: CGA -TCA Sharad Raghavan
-The Hindu The new method provides a more accurate picture of a company's financial position. It is also more complex, expensive and time-consuming. The Controller General of Accounts has asked the government to be careful in adopting the accrual method of accounting considering the costs involved as only a few of its departments can benefit. “We should tread this subject in a careful manner. There is no such thing as a big-bang approach....
More »Neglecting Health Expenditure in Favour of the Chimera of Insurance -Dipa Sinha
-TheWire.in When the data tells us insurance-based health schemes have not reduced out-of-pocket expenditure for the poor, Jaitley’s budgetary focus should have been on boosting public provision of health care. Despite sustained economic growth for over two decades, improvements in health indicators in India have not kept pace. By 2015, India was able to meet only four out of the ten health targets set under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for that...
More »For a quantum leap to deliver primary medical care -Meenakshi Datta Ghosh & Dr. Prasanta Mahapatra
-The Hindu The primary health-care system in India, intended to enable affordable health care, has not delivered on its promise. Rural, public health facilities are unable to attract, retain and ensure the regular presence of trained medical professionals. Health centres and hospitals in the public sector have proliferated but they are distributed inequitably. India may have one government hospital bed for every 1,833 people, but the reality is that while in...
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