-The Hindu The broad contours of a cooperative federal polity where the Centre and States engage as equal partners in development is now emerging after the government on Tuesday accepted the recommendations of the Fourteenth Finance Commission. The FFC, headed by former RBI Governor Y.V. Reddy, has broken new ground by recommending a move away from scheme and grants-based support to States to a greater devolution of funds from the Centre's...

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...

-Business Standard Financial position, spending capacity to play a big role, say sources The government might take a hard view on several social sector schemes, including the Prime Minister's pet projects of Digital India and Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchaee Yojana in the coming Budget for 2015-16. These might get a renewed thrust but perhaps not in the form of a significant increase in Plan allocation. New ways in which funds will be raised...

-Frontline A critique of the report of the high-level committee on restructuring the FCI and reviewing its role by TK Rajalakshmi SOON after assuming power at the Centre, Narendra Modi's National Democratic Alliance government set up a high-level committee on re-structuring the Food Corporation of India that was mandated to make the food management system more efficient. It was headed by Shanta Kumar, former Union Minister for Rural Development and former Chief...

-Zee News Agriculture is consistently losing its importance in India's economic growth. The agriculture sector contributes to just 15 percent of India's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but over 50 percent of the population is still dependent on it. The farm sector, including forestry and fishing, grew by 3.2 percent in the quarter ending September, as compared o 3.8 percent in previous quarter and 4.7 percent in 2013-14. For the entire financial...