Shifting the focus away from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Union Budget has sought to give greater thrust to it other flagship programme Bharat Nirman, covering six sectors, by allocating an additional Rs. 10,000 crore for 2011-12 to provide rural broadband connectivity to all the 2.5 lakh panchayats within the next three years. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has made a total allocation of Rs. 58,000 crore, marking...

The B S Yeddyurappa government rolled out a whole new slew of populist schemes in its 2011-12 revenue surplus Budget on Thursday, targeting an increase in the number of ‘direct beneficiaries’, especially in the agriculture sector. New schemes announced in Yeddyurappa’s Budget include a provision of Rs 10,000 each to 10 lakh small farmers in dry lands, reduction of interest rates on co-operative bank loans from three to one per...

Cash transfers, the latest global development fashion, involve several risks in India, not least the risk of forgetting the need for continuing structural change. WHEN I was growing up, several decades ago, middle-class society in India was always a little delayed in catching on to Western fashions whether in music or dress or in other aspects. The past decades of globalisation seemed to have changed all that. Modern communications technology...

Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan on Wednesday announced that the scheme for supply of ration rice at Rs.2 a kg would be extended to all cardholders, including APL cardholders, subject to certain conditions. People with high incomes and landholdings would not be eligible. Briefing the media on the Cabinet decisions, the Chief Minister said the Cabinet had approved the recommendations of the Ninth Pay Revision Commission with changes proposed by the Cabinet...

With India growing faster than almost every other large economy, the government is right to address its long-run challenges. The push for investment in infrastructure is bearing fruit and the expansion of social programmes such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and the Right to Education Act (RTE) is spreading the benefits of growth across the population. But just as improved infrastructure doesn’t eliminate all traffic jams, rapid growth...