-Economic and Political Weekly The union budget for 2014-15 offers few changes in terms of policy priorities from the United Progressive Alliance government's Interim Budget for 2014-15, and it fails to recognise the cracks in the country's budgetary policies towards the social sectors, which have been worsening over time. Subrat Das (subrat@cbgaindia.org) is with the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, Delhi. Please click here to download ...

-The Times of India Blog The presidential address to Parliament on June 9, 2014 had focussed nearly exclusively on projects and schemes, eschewing policy. Therefore, many had eagerly awaited the budget speech for a policy vision of the new government. Unfortunately, it too left observers guessing on whether the government would tackle tough reforms or rely principally on better implementation. Had this been the budget of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), arguably...

-The Hindu It was late afternoon on December 21, 2012, five days after five men and a juvenile gang-raped and fatally assaulted a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in Delhi. The stream of people walking towards Raisina Hill kept growing. Every few minutes, a loud sound followed by smoke billowing from tear gas shells fired from the towering red sandstone government buildings would send the protesters running. In a...

-Vikalp A remarkable feature of the first budget of the Modi government was that the numbers in it (see Table 1 for a summary) - of the revenues that are anticipated from different source, the expenditures allocated to different heads and the fiscal deficit which expresses the gap between the aggregates of these - were almost identical to those in the Interim Budget presented earlier in the year by the UPA...

-Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) The paper examines the restructuring of expenditure in the first budget of the new government, and its feasibility. It compares the increase in budget allocations for key macroeconomic aggregates and sectoral plan outlays for the BJP and UPAII Interim Budget, and the change from the Interim Budget. Although overall tactics are aligned to the strategy articulated, the alignment is only marginal as yet, because...