-The Economic Times World Bank has said it will extend full financial support to India to help enhance the abysmal level of infrastructural development in the country in the 12th Five Year Plan that begins next fiscal.  The World Bank president Robert B Zoellick, who begins his fifth and last official visit to India on Monday, has expressed intent to discuss innovative methods of financing with Indian leaders during his stay.  "India's needs...

One man’s fiscal problem is another man’s lifeline. Trigger happy bureaucrats and economists may love shooting down subsidies because it bloats the fiscal deficit and burdens the government but the simple fact is that in a one billion strong nation, in which nearly one in every three live below the poverty line, one needs an effective and efficient method through which privileged tax payers can support the poor. Last week, finance...

The UPA-II has used the Budget to again play politics with hunger. But it has paid no heed to the ticking time bomb of growing social tensions as 58 million Indians living off agriculture slide deeper into poverty. The Economic Survey says more than half the population is dependent on a sector whose share in the economy is shrinking. The urban-rural income divide is therefore steadily widening, a tinder box that...

The finance minister’s budget includes a big boost in spending on reducing malnutrition, clearly the priority among the social services programs of the Congress party-led government. Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said India will increase spending on malnutrition programs by 58% in fiscal 2012-13 to 158 billion rupees, or about $3 billion. Included in this new spending is a plan to reorganize the Integrated Child Development Services, the central government-led initiative that has...

-The Business Standard In Budget, reformers win, NAC loses The consensus opinion that has developed about the 2012-13 Budget presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday is that it was unambitious, especially in terms of reworking government spending. It delivered little in terms of a vision for reform, the argument goes, constrained as it was by the spending-hungry allies in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the entitlement-hooked Congress leadership. A...