-Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) Given that one of the biggest casualties of the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown have been the loss of jobs and livelihood, this paper examines what the impact has been on the socially disadvantaged groups such as Dalits and Adivasis. It then analyses the Union Government's policy response and attempts to understand whether these measures were adequate to ameliorate the livelihood crisis. Please click here...
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Centre not likely to go for any off-Budget borrowing this year -Arup Roychoudhury
-Business Standard This is a move that has been hailed by economists and policy-watchers as it makes budgeting a more transparent process Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in this year’s Budget speech, had said that she would discontinue extra-budgetary resources (EBR) funding for the Food Corporation of India, in a continued bid to clean up the central government’s balance sheet and end below-the-line accounting. As a result, the EBR provision for 2021-22...
More »MNREGA funds allocation: Honouring the work-on-demand guarantee -Ashwini Kulkarni
-IdeasforIndia.com The Centre has sought an additional Rs. 25,000 crore as funding for MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act). Based on simple calculations using official data, Ashwini Kulkarni contends that the actual fund requirement is in fact much higher. As the pandemic continues to adversely impact rural livelihoods, the government should allocate sufficient funds to MNREGA, in order to honour the work-on-demand guarantee. For over a month, national and local...
More »Health account numbers that require closer scrutiny -Indranil
-The Hindu The reduction of out-of-pocket expenditure that the NHA highlights is essentially due to a decline in utilisation of care Low public spending on health in India has meant that people depend heavily on their own means to access health care. It causes rich-poor, rural-urban, gender and caste-based divides in access to health care, pushes people to poverty, and forces them to incur debt or sell assets. As a result, our...
More »Gramin Agricultural Markets: Two years on, just 6% haats upgraded -Shagun Kapil
-Down to Earth The Centre had announced a scheme in the 2018-19 budget to upgrade rural haats so that small farmers could get fair prices for their produce It has been two years since an ambitious programme to convert 22,000 rural haats into Gramin Agricultural Markets (GrAMs) was launched. But only 1,251 have come up till now. This is barely six per cent of the target. Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told...
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