-The Hindu Even with closures, capex exceeded plan, says Expenditure Secretary Expenditure Secretary T.V. Somanathan said the government has been very careful and realistic in its expenditure and receipts projections for 2021-22, and that its push for capital expenditure is the largest ever over a two-year period. Excerpts: * You have called it an expansionary Budget, but overall spending is just about ₹33,000 crore in 2021-22 over this year’s revised estimates (RE). Also,...

-Press released by Right to Food Campaign dated 3rd February, 2021 In its press release dated 3rd February, 2021, Right to Food Campaign has stated that the Union Budget 2021-22 reduced financial allocations for crucial social security schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), midday meals, maternity entitlements, and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Please click here to access the press release. Kindly click here, here, here...

-Counterview.net Even as calling Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget “historic”, top international NGO Oxfam, pointing towards “some gaps” in it, “especially while addressing inequalities on the lines of caste, class, gender and occupation”, has regretted that the Budget “does not address the urgent spending needs in the social sector, especially in health and education.” In a statement, Oxfam India quotes CEO stating that “the Union Budget 2021 has failed to address inequality...

-The Indian Express While the government has failed to deliver what was promised through the main Budget and subsequent mini-Budgets, estimates for next year also point to missed opportunities to use fiscal measures to revive the ailing economy. Expectations from Budget 2021 were high. Unsurprisingly so, for an economy battered by two years of slowdown, with a pre-pandemic annual growth rate of 4 per cent being a decadal low and the subsequent...

-Hindustan Times Here are three charts which can help us understand this. If there is one point on which the Union Budget 2021-22 has received bipartisan praise, it is the fiscal transparency it has brought into Budgetary calculations. By bringing hitherto uncounted expenditure heads into the Budgetary numbers, and accounting for past dues, the Budget has done away with the dubious practice of artificially underreporting the fiscal deficit numbers. While this is a...