The big-ticket item in the “Interim Budget 2019-20” was the announcement of a cash transfer to farmers holding less than 2 hectares, of Rs 6,000 per household to be paid in three instalments of Rs 2,000 each. Estimated to cover…
The recent interim budget clearly reflects concerns that a majority of India’s people, especially in the agricultural and informal sector, have experienced hardship despite the on-going and relatively high growth in the economy. Palliatives designed to lessen these hardships include…
Everyone expected the Modi government to do something big – or at least promise something big – before the general elections. Everyone also sensed that it would be something to do with farmers, one of the economic and social concerns…
The Narendra Modi government has now carried its penchant for undermining institutions to the national budget itself. Not only has it treated what should have been an interim budget, as its tenure lasts barely two months into the new financial…
Unbelievable but true: there is nothing – repeat, nothing at all – in the Budget to deal with the job crisis. This is crazy, since lack of employment (especially for the young) and the problems in agriculture have emerged as…
In a pre-election budget speech filled with propaganda about the supposed developmental achievements of the Modi government, substitute Finance Minister Piyush Goyal read out a text that both window-dressed the revised estimates and violated all norms that should apply to…
