Should the Central government run schools, crèches, pre-schools, dispensaries, employment schemes, the buying and selling of food grains, and build houses, not to speak of selling milk as it does in Delhi? Though the states seem to have taken it as their fate to have schemes on state subjects like education, agriculture and so on tailored for them by the Centre, as if in distrust of the states’ capability to think...

“Budget is more than a document of income and expenditure. People expect it to tackle the twin problems of poverty and social injustice while ensuring better income and standard of living.” Country’s first woman Finance Minister of any state government, Upinderjit Kaur, said this while presenting her first budget and last of the present Akali-BJP government on Monday. With the state slated to go to polls early next year, the Rs...

Out of 400 government offices in the Pune district, till January 2010, not even a single one had a board displaying the names of the Public Information Officer (PIO) or the Appelate Authority. However under the Right to information Act (RTI), 2005, it is mandatory for all offices to display such information prominently. A year later 240 of them have put up the boards with names, addresses and contact numbers of...

One of the big surprises in the 2011-2012 budget was that spending on the country’s landmark rural employment program remained flat, disappointing activists who see it as a way of redressing growing wealth disparities. The program has since 2006 guaranteed 100 days of work a year for unskilled laborers to build rural infrastructure like irrigation ditches and roads. The Congress party has made the program, known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural...

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...