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...

-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...

-The Hindu Business Line Radha Mohan Singh, the Union Agriculture Minister, lent vocal support to genetically modified (GM) crops on Friday stating that technologically enhanced seeds could help India realise its food security ambition and believed it held great promise in minimising productivity losses particularly on account of abiotic stress factors like floods and drought. "While agriculture feeds the nation, seeds feed agriculture... Bt Cotton in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A public health expert has questioned the Indian government's commitment to effectively tackling tuberculosis, citing slashed funds, late diagnoses and a failure to curb incorrect or inappropriate prescriptions by many private practitioners. India's plans to eliminate TB as a public health problem by 2050 will remain unachievable without sustained financial support, strong political will and stringent regulation, Mahavir Golechha has said. Golechha is a faculty member with the health...

-The Guardian Countries are recognising their obligation to feed their citizens, but with growing corporate control over food systems, the battle is far from over As the first round of intergovernmental negotiations on the sustainable development goals gets under way in New York, I am reminded of the immense struggle over time to ensure that every human being has quality food in sufficient quantity to meet their needs - a right laid...