-PTI Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, during a debate on demonetisation in the Upper House on November 17, 2016, had termed the loan issue of Vijay Mallya a "terrible legacy" that the NDA government had inherited from the previous UPA regime. The finance ministry has told the Central Information Commission (CIC) that it does not have information about the loans given to industrialist Vijay Mallya, prompting the transparency panel to remark that the...

-The Indian Express Budget’s bias toward privately-delivered care undermines universal health coverage Until about four decades ago, specialist healthcare (secondary and tertiary care) was largely a province of public hospitals, and the private sector largely kept itself to the provision of generalist healthcare. This underwent a transformation with the rise of the advanced medical interventions comprising tertiary-care medicine like organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Given these highly-profitable medical advances, the private...

-The Hindu New unit maps volume of chatter, its nature, user location As Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley stood up on Thursday to deliver the Budget speech this year, a real-time monitoring of public online conversations around the word “Budget” was being carried out by a small unit set up by Minister Smriti Irani in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. The longer than usual budget speech spawned many talking points and reactions, much...

-TheWire.in Even as schemes have received minimal allocations, this budget signals an important shift in the political narrative. Gone is the focus on jobs, skills, aspirations and empowerment. Arun Jaitley had a difficult choice to make this budget. Maintain fiscal prudence or respond to growing demands for public expenditure in light of growing rural distress and at the same time keeping an eye on 2019. He did this today with great panache....

-The Indian Express The focus in the Union Budget on tertiary healthcare at the cost of primary and secondary healthcare is flawed. A publicly-financed health insurance scheme is no substitute If the past three Union budgets were any indication, this budget’s approach to the health sector should not have surprised anyone. The prescription in the National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 to increase the government’s (Centre and the states together) health expenditure from the...