-Down to Earth The use of tax incentives to attract investments is prevalent around the world. However, there is no definitive data on the global magnitude of incentives granted because not all countries collect and publicly report such data and there is no common methodology for reporting across all countries. Rough estimate by Action Aid (2013) pegs the incentives granted by developing countries from corporate income tax (CIT) at $138 billion....

-ThePrint.in French economist defends Congress' minimum income guarantee scheme, says India's Poor have been 'badly treated by the country's elite'. New Delhi: French economist Thomas Piketty has defended the Congress party’s poll promise of minimum income guarantee (MIG), saying that India’s Poor have been “badly treated by the country’s elite”. “It is high time to move from the politics of caste conflict to the politics of income and wealth distribution,” Piketty said in...

-The Indian Express Direct income support for farmers is too late, too little The hopes of farmers for a meaningful package from the Modi government have evaporated after the announcements in the Union budget. The proposed Rs 6,000 annual direct income support to small and marginal farmers is a drop in the ocean. States like Telangana and Odisha have done much better with their Rythu Bandhu and Kalia schemes respectively. After...

-Newsclick.in Income support should not lead to the State washing its hands of the Poor after handing them a certain sum of money whose real value too would dwindle over time. With Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s announcement recently at Raipur that his party had taken a “historic decision” to introduce an income guarantee scheme for the Poor, and with the general anticipation that the Narendra Modi government’s last budget will also announce...

-The Indian Express Interim budget does little to tackle unemployment, poverty. And it is clear that the government’s figures cannot be trusted. Last month, I was part of an all-party delegation of MPs from Karnataka, led by a Union cabinet minister, who met the Union rural development minister. We requested him to release the MGNREGA funds overdue to Karnataka. We pleaded that the Poorest of the Poor, who turn to MGNREGA...