-The Telegraph New Delhi: Finance minister Arun Jaitley has slashed the overall allocation for Dalits and tribals in his budget compared with last year's proposals in a trend critics fear could see the "last man" gradually becoming the "lost man". The media, too, came in for criticism for giving the "impression" that the country had no SC/ST citizens. Jaitley yesterday set aside Rs 30,851 crore for Scheduled Castes and Rs 19,980 crore for...
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Whose national interest? -Nandini Sundar
-The Indian Express Indian National Interest requires that our environment be ruined, people displaced, resources thoughtlessly mined, all for the benefit of foreign companies and for the private benefit of people in power. This is the only conclusion that we can draw after reading the recent revelations on Essar alongside the ministry of home affairs (MHA) affidavit in the Delhi High Court responding to Greenpeace activist Priya Pillai's plea that her...
More »The budget exposes the class bias of the Modi govt -Prasenjit Bose
-Hindustan Times Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's claims of already having achieved an economic turnaround, made in his budget speech, evoke suspicion. Inflation is certainly down and so is the current account deficit, but that has almost entirely to do with the crash in international crude oil prices, which have fallen from $110 per barrel in June 2014 to around $57 per barrel currently. In fact, rather than passing on the full...
More »Social spending cut first time in a decade
-Hindustan Times The government slashed plan expenditure by about 20% in the 2015-16 budget amid fiscal concerns, hitting spending on social sectors such as education and women's empowerment that were the focus areas of the previous UPA administration. In the 2014-15 budget, Arun Jaitley allocated Rs. 5,75,000 crore for plan expenditure, or money that goes towards creation of productive assets, but could spare only Rs. 4,65,277 crore this time. This is also...
More »Anaemic allocation leaves healthcare gasping for more -Smriti Kak Ramachandran
-The Hindu Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's announcement of new AIIMS-like institutions, tax sops for those who buy health insurance, and Rs. 33,150 crore allocation has given the health sector little to cheer. Though the draft of the government's new national health policy wants public health expenditure to increase to 2.5 per cent of the GDP, the allocation seems insufficient to meet the government's ambitious universal health assurance mission that includes free...
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