-The Tribune While giving concessions worth Rs.1,000 crore in the direct taxes paid by the rich, the government plans to net an extra Rs. 19,000 crore in indirect taxes, which are contributed by all. This reveals a regressive intent. Like all Union budgets, this one also is long on promises but hides the real dynamics, namely, how the resources are to be raised for the promised very substantial expenditures. The budget is...
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A budget for Bharat can reset the narrative -Anil Padmanabhan
-Livemint.com Pro-poor and yet not populist can be the single defining strand of this year’s Union budget The run-up to this year’s Union budget, especially the past one week, has taken place in the backdrop of an unprecedented, vicious political confrontation between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the opposition. Together with the hit-wicket tendencies of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), it probably exaggerated the magnitude of every challenge...
More »The near death, and revival, of MGNREGS -Sanjeeb Mukherjee
-Business Standard Back-to-back droughts and record-low farm commodity prices have forced the NDA government to look at MGNREGS in a new light.Things have started to look up for the scheme About a year back, Raqibul Hussain, Assam's rural development minister, was unhappy because he could not stop the Central government from lowering the state's annual entitlement under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for 2014-15. This, he said in a day-long...
More »Budget expectations for rural sector
Amidst uncertainty over India's performance in terms of agricultural production and livelihood security of rural population, the Union Budget of 2016-17 will be presented by Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley on 29 February. Given the extent of drought in more than 10 states of India during 2015-16, it is expected that the NDA Government will allocate more resources for rejuvenating the rural sector. Since the country has seen two years of...
More »Jats think they’re backward; there’s a reason -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Agriculture doesn’t pay that much, land is no longer the source of power it once was, and the community has failed to keep up with a changing India. The Jats conform fully to the idea of a ‘dominant caste’, a term the eminent sociologist M N Srinivas used to refer to any community that is both numerically strong in a village or local area, as well as wields...
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