Budgets are no longer statements of accounts or expenditure. In the contemporary context, they are to be seen more as a statement of intent, ambition, reform and politics of inclusion. If these are the parameters on which Budget 2011 is to be judged, it fails despite an implicit statement of intent. For a government which has been elected on the agenda of inclusion, even the statement of intent is not new....

The Plan allocation for school education, especially for Right to Education (RTE), has seen a 40 per cent increase over last year. But the actual allocation is only a third of what should have gone for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan under the funds committed under the RTE Act. The RTE commitment of Rs 2.33 lakh crore to implement the Right to Edcuation was approved by the Planning Commission, by the ministry and...

Cash transfers cannot and should not replace the public provision of essential goods and services, but rather supplement them. Cash transfers are the latest fad of the international development industry, as the preferred strategy for poverty reduction. And now Indian policymakers are busy catching up. The idea was mooted in the Government's Economic Survey for 2010-11, and the Finance Minister made an explicit announcement in his budget speech for replacing some...

A good marker of a country’s progress is the environment in which its children grow up.  Prevalence of malnutrition, hunger, unhygienic surroundings and forced child labour cost a country dearly in terms of its real growth. The State of the World's Children 2011 report shows how little is being invested in the future citizens of our world. The theme of this year’s report is “Adolescence: An Age of Opportunity” and...

No ads on government achievements at the cost of exchequer The Election Commission (EC) has asked the Chief Electoral Officers of Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala, West Bengal and Puducherry, where Assembly elections have been announced, to direct the district election officers (DEOs) to immediately constitute district-level committees to monitor and investigate paid news. The committees should scrutinise all newspapers to locate political advertisements in the garb of news coverage appearing during the...