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 Indian Express Recently, the Central government invited comments on its Draft National Health Policy (DNHP). The DNHP provides an exhaustive coverage of health issues and challenges facing this much neglected sector. Its major recommendations are making health a justiciable right and denial of care an offence; provisioning of health services through a strengthened public health delivery system in partnership with the private sector; enhancing public spending from the current level...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Arvind Kejriwal government's order on Monday against any demolition in Delhi is in tune with the recently extended central legislation, Delhi Laws (Special Provisions) Act 2014, which protects all unauthorized colonies, unauthorized constructions and slums that have come up to June 2014 till 2017. The decision comes in the backdrop of the recent slum demolitions in Rangpuri Pahari and Wazirpur. The protest by a few...

-PTI New Delhi: Centre has asked states to set up vigilance committees to ensure transparency in supply of food grains through ration shops under the Public Distribution System (PDS). "States have been requested to set up vigilance committees at district, block and FPS level with due representation of SCs/STs, women and local bodies to ensure transparency and proper functioning of Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS)," Paswan said in a Food Ministry statement. Chairing...

-The Telegraph Cuttack: Orissa High Court today directed the state government to constitute a high-level committee to check outbreak of jaundice in various parts of the state. The division bench of Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice S.C. Parija issued the direction on a PIL. Giribala Behera, councillor of ward No. 4 of the Cuttack Municipal Corporation, filed the petition seeking intervention for immediate measures to check spread of the outbreak in the...