-Decoding the Priorities: An Analysis of Union Budget 2020-21, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), February 2020 The publication presents an analysis of the priorities in Union Budget 2020-21, both on public expenditure and resource mobilisation front. It has been divided broadly into five chapters. The first chapter focuses on a host of important aspects under Resource Mobilisation, like domestic tax policy, international taxation policy, financial transparency, and Centre-State...

-The Hindu Low allocations and specific policy statements point to greater privatisation and withdrawal of the state Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman began her speech by saying that the Union Budget was “woven around three prominent themes” — aspirational India, economic development for all and building a caring society. Achieving any of these would require extraordinary efforts on the social sector front starting with allocating additional resources for health, education, nutrition, employment...

-The Indian Express A reworking of curriculum and activities is urgently needed for the age band from four to eight. ASER 2019 report underlines this While the importance of good early childhood education has been known for a long time, the draft New Education Policy (released in June 2019) links the “severe learning crisis” to what goes on with young children in India. The voluminous policy document points out that close...

-The Hindu The AAP will hope that the Assembly polls are a referendum on its government’s work Delhi, the Union Territory (UT) that hosts India’s capital city, might lag behind several States in total population and in area, but it enjoys outsize significance in terms of media and political attention. With 1.47 crore electors spread across the largely metropolitan national capital region and its pockets of rural voters in some suburbs, Delhi...

-Livemint.com Let’s not discredit the findings of statistical surveys that are conducted among real respondents The uncomfortable truth that emerged from the leaked report of the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) is that rural poverty increased substantially between 2011-12 and 2017-18 for the first time in five decades. That this happened during a period of claimed high growth should have led to more research on what went wrong. Instead, there have been attempts...