-The Indian Express Únion Budget 2018: Budget addresses the crises in agriculture. The devil is in the allocations All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. In Anna Karenina, only if a person is satisfied on all counts will she be happy. The allocations in the budget cover every sector, with umpteen implications, and no person’s expectations can be fulfilled on all counts. While every...

-Business Today Social sector spending and investments in infrastructure development could be the highlights of the forthcoming Union Budget 2018-19, credit rating agency ICRA forecasts. It expects increase in budgetary allocations for social infrastructure and social security spending, such as NREGA (rural job security), food subsidy (food security), insurance schemes and welfare pensions. Larger allocations for infrastructure related to cold chains, etc., considered to boost the agricultural sector and the rural...

-The Hindu The former Chief Economic Adviser on India’s current slowdown in economic growth and the mix of policies needed to reignite it In a career spanning more than four decades, economist Kaushik Basu has donned many hats. He was Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India (2009-2012) and Chief Economist of the World Bank (2012-2016). At present, he is Professor of Economics and the C. Marks Professor of International Studies...

-The Indian Express India’s economy is not doing well. Only carefully crafted policy reforms can turn it around The Indian government recently lowered its economic growth forecast for 2017-18 to 6.5 per cent, and there is reason to be concerned. That the economy would suffer a slowdown after demonetisation was inevitable, as all professional economists could see. But growth dropping to 5.7 per cent and 6.3 per cent in, respectively, the first...

  Budgetary allocation to a particular sector indicates how much priority the government assigns to that sector as compared to the rest. A preliminary analysis by the Inclusive Media for Change team indicates that the actual expenditure (net of receipts and recoveries) by two of the country’s most important ministries, namely the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) and the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) was less than 1 percent...