Quite opposite to the top-down model of budgeting, the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party-led Government in Delhi has decided to go for a 'citizen-centric' budget planning at 'mohalla'-level for the fiscal year 2015-16. Drawing lessons from the success stories of participatory budgeting conducted at municipal-level in cities like Porto Alegre (Brazil), the AAP-led Delhi Government has decided to launch this form of decentralized budgeting on a pilot basis in a...

-The Hindu KARIMNAGAR (Telengana): Fighting adversities is part of human survival and villagers of the interior Veernapalli and other villages in Yellareddypet mandal have been doing that for quite some time. Saving their standing crops from wild animals has become their top priority what with the decreased area of cultivation due to water shortage. They cannot afford technological support, but that has not deterred them from devising their own plan to keep...

-Frontline A critique of the report of the high-level committee on restructuring the FCI and reviewing its role by TK Rajalakshmi SOON after assuming power at the Centre, Narendra Modi's National Democratic Alliance government set up a high-level committee on re-structuring the Food Corporation of India that was mandated to make the food management system more efficient. It was headed by Shanta Kumar, former Union Minister for Rural Development and former Chief...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Amendments proposed by the previous Congress-led union government to the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 had the potential of improving upon this progressive legislation. Unfortunately, with its successor pursuing different priorities, the possibility of the amendments being passed remains rather low. Kamal Nayan Choubey (kamalnayanchoubey@gmail.com) is with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. A bill for an amendment to the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas)...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: Three years after India Against Corruption (IAC) imploded and the Aam Aadmi Party was born, its activist core minus the saffron periphery have launched what is arguably the largest movement against the NDA government over the land acquisition ordinance. About 5,000 farmers from across India descended on the dirt tracks of Palwal, Haryana, in a sea of green and white flags on Friday. Over the next four...