-Reuters The government has ordered a cut of nearly 20% in its 2014-15 healthcare budget due to fiscal strains, putting at risk key disease control initiatives in a country whose public spending on health is already among the lowest in the world. Two health ministry officials told Reuters on Tuesday that more than 60 billion rupees, or $948 million, has been slashed from their budget allocation of around $5 billion for the...
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Scheming against the poor -TK Rajalakshmi
-Frontline The Left and other national parties protest against the NDA government's attempts to dilute the MGNREGS by limiting its budget and reducing its reach. IN a rare show of solidarity, representatives of several political parties took issue with the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on its controversial proposal to restructure the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The opposition, which was initially confined to the...
More »Key Maneka plans run into Modi hurdle
-The Telegraph Differences with the Prime Minister's Office appear to have held up key schemes of the women and child development (WCD) ministry announced in the budget five months ago. Among the measures stalled is the "one-stop rape crisis centres", christened Nirbhaya centres after the 2012 Delhi bus rape victim and seen as a pet project of Maneka Gandhi. The finance ministry had approved Rs 500 crore for the plan but, with the...
More »Campaign against Govt's move to cut social sector spending from Nov 30 -Aditi Nigam
-The Hindu Business Line Questioning the kind of growth model pursued by the Government, civil society activists on Saturday called for a wider public debate on the reported move to curtail social sector spending on schemes such as the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGA, and for the HIV affected. "Considering the fact that the Government is forecasting a 5.3 per cent growth rate for this year, the social sector cuts in Budget...
More »Activists and concerned citizens oppose budget cuts in social sector
-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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