-The Indian Express Candidates are expected to spend up to R11,000 crore collectively Election spending by candidates and the state machinery for the upcoming General Elections is expected to bring about only a marginal rise in the GDP growth of the world's largest democracy. Poll expenditure, which is estimated to touch Rs 11,000 crore by candidates in the country's 543 Lok Sabha constituencies could increase the country's gross domestic product by about...

-Outlook As subsidies for the poor continue to be under attack, a ground-up report from 10-states shows how well welfare schemes have worked over the last 10 years. Ahead of Elections 2014, rights-based welfare schemes are under attack. To those who argue ‘Dolenomics' doesn't work, a survey of five schemes in 10 states shows that the Rs 1,68,478 crore annually the nation spends is making a real and tangible difference on...

-Live Mint Mint examines why millions of women are missing from farms, factories, colleges, and offices in India, which has one of the lowest ratios of working women in the world Mumbai: Every monsoon, minivans ferrying women labourers can be seen making their way from the small sleepy town of Wardha to Waifad village, 18 kilometres away. Urban workers from Wardha have come to occupy an integral part of Waifad's farm...

-The Hindu Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's estimate for India's 2014-15 food subsidy bill of Rs 1,15,000 crore in the interim budget is more than twice of India's Poverty Gap, or the cost of pushing all households above the poverty line if cash transfers were used instead. The Poverty Gap for India, as per the latest NSSO Consumption Expenditure Survey data available (for the year 2011-12) is Rs. 55,744 crore. A...

-The Business Standard The economic logic - and political reasons - behind the giant shift of spending power to the states Interim Budgets are not supposed to do this. This is precisely what they are not supposed to do. They are not supposed to lay out a policy change so vast it disempowers the next central government. But that's what P Chidambaram has done - and it appears to have been...