-Press Release from Centre for Budget Analysis (CBGA) and Jan Awaaz New Delhi, 29 November 2014: There have been a number of media reports recently around possible cuts in Union Budget allocations for the current fiscal 2014-15 in case of social sector programmes, i.e. reductions in allocations in the Revised Estimates (RE) for 2014-15 as compared to the Budget Estimates (BE) that were made in July this year. This issue deserves...
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Where the frontline is key to the bottomline -Lant Pritchett and Yamini Aiyar
-The Indian Express Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly promised India "maximum governance". But to get there, the high costs and ineffectiveness of frontline service providers need to be addressed. Take elementary school teachers, for instance. "Complete rest in comfortable conditions" is the description a rather candid elementary education cluster resource centre coordinator (CRCC) in Bihar gave his own job. And it's not just him, it is also how the CRCC describes...
More »Moderate inflation is a passing phase: Economists -Ishan Bakshi
-Business Standard A monsoon deficit is likely to affect the agriculture output, which could have an impact on the food inflation The sharp fall in inflation over the past few months has raised the clamour for interest rate cuts. With the Consumer Price Index (CPI) falling to 5.5 per cent in October from 6.5 per cent a month ago, which is below the central bank's target of six per cent by January...
More »Wrong numbers: Attack on NREGA is misleading
-The Times of India Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, hereafter BP, have argued for phasing out the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in favour of cash transfers ("Rural Inefficiency Act", ToI, 23 October). It's surprising-and amusing-that two eminent economists have chosen to make a case based on prior beliefs and some sophomoric wordplay ('mis'leading economists), rather than on the available evidence. A survey by one of us of the empirical literature...
More »Dangerous withdrawal -Prabhat Patnaik
-The Telegraph The National Democratic Alliance government is planning to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, had already asked for the employment programme of the MGNREGA under which the state was obliged to provide employment on demand (failing which an unemployment allowance of a specified amount had to be paid), to be downgraded to a mere "food-for-work" programme, where the state...
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