-Business Standard Cess, surcharges come in handy New Delhi: Looking to leave its political imprint over spending in rural India, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has budgeted for a massive 31 per cent hike in its share of spending on nine big-ticket centrally sponsored schemes (CSS) in 2016-17 over last year's budgetary allocation. Last year's Budget mantra of 'cooperative federalism' has been sidestepped to favour political exigencies. To fund these schemes, which...

In the age of social media, various sections of the Indian polity and civil society have reacted publicly in diverse voices, following the presentation of the Union Budget 2016-17 by Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley. An assessment of the Union Budget 2016-17 has been done in the following paragraphs by the Inclusive Media for Change team, based on a number of media reports, Government documents (including the Budget documents), and reports...

-The Indian Express The budget recognises the crisis in rural India, but allocations do not match the talk In India now, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the time finance ministers spend talking about a particular issue in their budget speeches and the amount of money they actually allocate to deal with it. This was true of former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget speeches, but incumbent FM Arun Jaitley...

-Livemint.com The agriculture sector saw a 94% increase in allocation, but an analysis of the numbers suggest that the real hike is a modest 27% New Delhi: In a bid to revive growth in agriculture and improve farm incomes, at a time when rural India is weathering a protracted period of distress, the Union Budget presented on Monday placed a renewed focus on the farm sector by increasing funds for crop insurance...

-Down to Earth The 2016 Budget has the right intent for the rural sector, but lacks clarity Union finance minister Arun Jaitley devoted a major part of his third budget speech to “transform India” and of the nine pillars to achieve the goal, three were on strengthening the rural sector. Altogether, the rural sector (including irrigation and agriculture) received close to Rs 200,000 crore this Budget, which makes one point clear:...