-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...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: It’s quite possible that in this Parliament session, India will make the transition from being a wasteful welfare state to a reformed economy that allocates scarce resources efficiently. The Modi government on Thursday introduced the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. When signed into law, the bill will make Aadhaar -- the unique biometric identification number -- central to all social...

-Business Standard The government could introduce a regulatory framework to ensure that the biometric details of citizens it collects is kept discreet and used only to generate Aadhaar numbers or authenticate them. The Aadhaar Bill, which could be introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, is likely to introduce this regulatory framework. It could also to propose that in cases of national security, an officer not below the rank of a joint...

-TheWire.in This year’s Union Budget markets itself as a pro-poor and pro-farmer budget. To take a closer and harder look at this, The Wire spoke to Ashok Gulati, chair professor for agriculture at ICRIER. Gulati tells The Wire why this budget is insignificant for reducing farmers’ distress, in spite of all the talk. Edited excerpts from the interview follow: * How much is the actual increase in the total allocation to agriculture...

-Press Release from National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) Government Running away from Responsibility: Pushing Farmers on edges Overlooked the need of majority of population, catering to few Political ‘Jumlas’ continues, ditching farmers once again under the garb of corporate regime; reduced responsibilities of public sector In recent times, announcement of the Union budget seems to be becoming a futile exercise, even with all the publicity and hype associated with it. We...