-The Hindu Allocation has remained same since 2007. Social sector spending has flatlined over the past few years, and massive spending expansions are required to keep Prime Minister Narendra Modi's key promises, Budget data show. Social sector spending - expenditure on health, education, water supply, sanitation and housing among others - has doubled over the past 10 years as a proportion of the Union government's total expenditure. But the big expansion came between...

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 The government's first full year Budget is an excellent chance to recognise missed opportunities and take corrective action with regard to investing in addressing gender inequality The coming Union Budget is significant for at least two reasons: first, this will be the new government's maiden full year Budget. Second, with the NITI Aayog replacing the Planning Commission, the government is likely to abolish the distinction between plan and non-plan Budgets. This...

-FirstPost.com Abhijit Sen, part-time member of the Planning commission, has openly criticised some of the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission, particularly with respect to the ones on sharing of taxes to state governments. The dissent note was carried in the report of the commission tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. "The recommendations regarding devolution and revenue deficit grants are bound to disrupt existing plan transfers, with likely very serious effects in the...

-The Hindu The implementation of the National Food Security Act is mired in apathy and confusion. A grave injustice is being done to millions of people who live on the margin of subsistence. It is not too late to remove the roadblocks, but this requires a sense of urgency An odd silence has surrounded the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in the last few months - as if food insecurity were a...