-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement demonetising high denomination notes on November 8, 2016, will do little to address the prime objective of flushing out black money but will adversely affect the economy in the short term, especially the informal sector, which is predominant in India, says M. Govinda Rao, a Member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission and Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public...

-Livemint.com Delays in payment and indifferent implementation, among other reasons, have blunted the programme’s effectiveness Procedural lapses have marred the implementation of the state-funded job guarantee programme aimed at alleviating rural distress in India, according to a review of the scheme in eight states by the rural development ministry. While delays in disbursal of funds for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have held up wage payments in Madhya...

-Kafila.org The last few months have seen an unusual public engagement around questions of secularism, freedom of speech, sedition and the like, with furious debates everywhere from our campuses, streets and TV studios to the floor of Parliament. The budget session has been enlivened by scenes of high drama, with the leading lights of the Treasury benches bringing colour, sound and fury to their tutorials on patriotism and nationalism. While these high-decibel...

-Livemint.com Pro-poor and yet not populist can be the single defining strand of this year’s Union budget The run-up to this year’s Union budget, especially the past one week, has taken place in the backdrop of an unprecedented, vicious political confrontation between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition. Together with the hit-wicket tendencies of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), it probably exaggerated the magnitude of every challenge...

Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made.   Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...