-PTI/ NDTV Finance secretary T V Somanathan on Monday said healthcare is primarily the responsibility of the states  Mumbai: Finance secretary TV Somanathan on Monday said healthcare is primarily the responsibility of the states, amid suggestions by the industry that the budgetary allocation for the sector is still low at 1.3 per cent of GDP. At a post-budget interaction of industry representatives in Mumbai with finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Confederation of Indian Industry...

-The Hindu Current price negotiated through bulk orders may not be replicable: Finance Secy The first lot of vaccines were procured by the Centre using PM CARES funds at a higher rate than the subsequent rounds paid for by budgetary allocations, The Hindu has learnt from the response to a Right to Information request by a transparency activist. The Health Ministry response said that the initial 5.6 crore doses of Covishield were bought...

-The Indian Express Somanathan said the government is trying to reach the target group of unskilled and semi-skilled workers through increased government expenditure in the construction sector. Working with a “constrained resource envelope” in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic ahead of Budget 2021-22, the government essentially had to make a choice between two policy options: handouts and capital expenditure. “We chose capex,” TV Somanathan, Expenditure Secretary, Ministry of Finance, told The...

-The Hindu Even with closures, capex exceeded plan, says Expenditure Secretary Expenditure Secretary T.V. Somanathan said the government has been very careful and realistic in its expenditure and receipts projections for 2021-22, and that its push for capital expenditure is the largest ever over a two-year period. Excerpts: * You have called it an expansionary budget, but overall spending is just about ₹33,000 crore in 2021-22 over this year’s revised estimates (RE). Also,...

-The Hindu In doing so, we risk the disengagement of those most invested in preserving our democratic institutions Ethical explorations often begin with emotional injury. Something simply feels wrong, and you ask yourself whether you are missing an important bit of information or the right perspective. This happened when I read the Supreme Court judgment pronouncing senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan guilty of criminal contempt for his two “scurrilous” tweets. I have known...