-The Economic Times India’s deficit numbers have come under lens as the govt is INCreasingly depending on off-budget borrowings. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said that the central government’s key deficit figures may be considerably higher than those stated in the union budget. In a presentation to the 15th Finance Commission (FFC) on July 8, three days after the July 5 budget, CAG has asked whether the extra-budgetary resources accounted for...
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How the Centre Can Ensure Women Receive Maternity Benefits -Vanita Leah Falcao, KC Sachin and Sabhil Nath Painkra
-TheWire.in INCreased budgetary allocation is a welcome step, but key aspects of the Pradhan Mantri Matritva Vandana Yojana scheme need to be reviewed. The Union Budget brought with it a 17% INCrease in this year’s allocation for the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD). Approximately 9% of the total allocation, which is Rs 29,000 crore, has been earmarked for the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY). The PMMVY is a Centrally sponsored...
More »How a social justice tool became a means to grab land in India's forests -Shekar Dattatri
-Hindustan Times SINCe Independence, waves of forest encroachments have been regularised on one pretext or another, and this unfortunate trend seems to be continuing. With a recent United Nations report warning that one million species of plants and animals are poised on the brink of extINCtion, we need to take all forest destruction very seriously The Forest Rights Act (FRA) was originally meant to redress historical injustice to genuine forest dwellers by...
More »Six reasons why the Economic Survey's presentation of MGNREGA is misleading -Rajendran Narayanan & Rakshita Swamy
-The Hindu The Economic Survey presents an unbalanced view of the technical interventions in MGNREGA A chapter in the recent Economic Survey on the “transformational” impact of Aadhaar on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) merits scrutiny. It presents a skewed and unbalanced view of the programme’s technical interventions instead of taking a comprehensive view of the implementation. The Survey draws heavily from the Indian School of Business’s working...
More »Final index score of NITI Aayog report on States adversely impacted -Vignesh Radhakrishnan & Srravya C
-The Hindu An analysis of the NITI Aayog’s ‘Healthy States, Progressive India’ report released on June 25 shows that the usage of estimated figures in place of reported numbers, to calculate certain health indicators, has adversely impacted the final index score of certain States while boosting that of others. Skewed result The report had used an estimated number of births and deliveries to calculate two key health outcome indicators — “full immunisation coverage”...
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