-Business Standard Financial position, spending capacity to play a big role, say sources The government might take a hard view on several social sector schemes, including the Prime Minister's pet projects of Digital India and Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchaee Yojana in the coming Budget for 2015-16. These might get a renewed thrust but perhaps not in the form of a significant increase in Plan allocation. New ways in which funds will be raised...

-Reuters   Subsidy cuts may still fail to impress investors: Experts New Delhi: India may slash its food and fuel subsidy bill by about $8 billion in next week's budget, two sources said, but despite the impressive headline, the cut is not as radical as free market champions had hoped for in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first full budget. Most of the 20 per cent cut in the budget for subsidies results from lower...

-IPS News NEW DELHI: Despite being one of the world's fastest expanding economies, projected to clock seven-percent GDP growth in 2017, India - a nation of 1.2 billion - is trailing behind on many vital social development indices while also hosting one-fourth of the world's poor. While the United Nations prepares to wrap up a decade-and-a-half of poverty alleviation efforts, framed through the lens of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), by the...

-Livemint.com The current fiscal year has been hard on rural India, home to nearly 70% of the country's population New Delhi: The current fiscal year has been hard on rural India, home to nearly 70% of the country's population. Growth in rural wages has slowed and spending on the flagship employment guarantee scheme has contracted substantially, that too in a deficit monsoon year; foodgrain output is expected to dip by 3%. Please click...

-The Hindu Shanta Kumar panel favoured a drastic cut in beneficiaries The Narendra Modi government is not in a hurry to accept the controversial recommendation of the Shanta Kumar panel to cut the public distribution system beneficiaries for subsidised foodgrains to 40 from 67 per cent under the National Food Security Act, highly placed government sources have indicated to The Hindu. With several crucial Assembly elections in the offing this and the next...