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The accompanying politico-administrative changes apart, Elections-2004 has caused the mid-course review of the economic reforms, seeking to introduce the missing "human face", about which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had begun talking about while in the Opposition.

The focus on broadband expansion in the Union Budget is timely to take the IT revolution to the next level: social inclusion, e-commerce, media, and distance education for India?s small towns and rural pockets.

Here is a look at the 2014-15 Budget, presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, through a series of graphs on allocations to various key sectors from the time of the previous NDA government.

There were no big reforms and no major policy turnarounds in the Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. It was a budget of small and tentative steps to help steady the ship and laid the foundation for big reforms in the months ahead.

This was not to be yet another budget speech. It came in the wake of a regime change where the electorate signaled its unhappiness with the direction of the country. Still, the FM came up with a modest Budget. But that is not the promise of the Modi government. The good days promised look far away.

We really do not understand inflation stickiness in India since 2010. However, the silver lining is that oil prices may not rise any further following the shale gas revolution in the US. The Finance Minister can certainly do something about growth and possibly pray for lower inflation.

The Interim Budget presented by Finance Minister P Chidambaram was a strange one. It contained much praise for the ruling coalition UPA's entire tenure, peppered with some disappointments.

The budget growth, clearly aimed at countering the challenge along the Sino-Indian border, is still marginal.

Some economists argue there is an overlap between the demands of the stock market and the emerging aspirational classes. The new FM has said, sacrifices will have to be made to correct the fiscal path. The question is who will make the sacrifices -- big capital or ordinary people?

The National Security Council Secretariat, headed by top spy Ajit Doval, may have gotten a staggering 311% increase in funds this year to tackle issues at the intersection of cybersecurity and nuclear weapon delivery systems.

The government’s promises on jobs and farmers’ incomes have fallen flat, so it may look to fill the gap with ‘sound and fury’.

This brief examines India’s defence allocations for 2022-23. It outlines the conceptual and definitional aspects of the defence budget, examines defence allocations from the prism of state of the economy and public finance, and explores the potential impacts of the budget announcements on the defence production sector of the government’s self-reliance mission, Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan. The analysis also utilises a comparison of India’s mi

Sustainable magic requires that the magician remain credible.

This year’s defence budget marks an increase of 8.1 percent from last year. China has justified its defence budget by arguing that its defence spending is less than 1.5 percent of its GDP, but that argument is not going to go down well with its neighbours.

In the Finance Bill introduced in Parliament on February 28, the budget estimates (BE) for defence have increased marginally from Rs 83,000 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 89,000 crore for 2006-07 ¿ a rise of about 7 per cent. With inflation ruling at 4 to 5 per cent, the real increase in current rupees is only of the order about 2 per cent.

The emergence of Bangladesh as the new hub of international Islamist terrorism, insurgency in Nepal and Maoist militancy across several states, add new challenges to national security threats that India traditionally tackles. Despite these, India's defence expenditure continues to decrease in real terms and as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) every year.

Allocations made for capital expenditure must increase if India is to keep pace with China's rising military might

Defence needs to be viewed as an integral part of national planning so as to comprehensively quantify the overall requirement to meet our legitimate security needs and strategic aspirations.

Modi Govt's defence budget will only sharpen the divide between an increasingly assertive China and the Indian security establishment trying hard to cope up with the Chinese military modernisation programme. China's 2014 military budget is of $132 billion while Indian budget is of approximately US $ 37 bn only.

Presenting the Interim Budget 2024-’25 on 1 February, the finance minister announced an allocation of INR 6,21,541 crore (approx. US$75 billion) for the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Representing 1.9 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 13 percent of Central Government Expenditure (CGE), MoD’s new budget is an increase of 4.7 percent over the previous outlays. This brief examines the MoD’s latest budget and contextualises it in the curr

In the next Budget Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee will have to strive hard to reduce fiscal deficit because a big fiscal deficit gives wrong signals to investors. The current year's Central and state combined fiscal deficit stands at 8.5 per cent.

The government will need a lot of explaining to do about the rising corruption in the Budget session and will have to cast its tax net wider to catch the tax dodgers. What it will do to make the tax base bigger could be an interesting feature of Budget 2013.

Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) is a targeted fiscal instrument that several developing countries have cemented into their growth plans. GRB is used to ensure that policy prescriptions to alleviate gender inequality translate into outputs by linking them to budgetary allocations. Although the concept was introduced in India, Bangladesh and Rwanda at around the same time (the early 2000s), the three countries have followed different routes and a

India introduced Gender-Responsive Budgeting (GRB) in financial year 2005-06 to design public spending in a way that ensures that the benefits accrue as much to the country’s women as they do to the men. India’s effort has influenced both the government’s expenditures and its revenue policies—such as additional tax rebates on properties owned by women, for instance—at the levels of both central and state governments. However, 18

Gender equality is a fundamental human right. This principle is also found in the SDG 2030 Agenda where its signatories, including India, reaffirmed their commitment to mainstreaming gender development and ensuring equal representation of women in political and economic decision-making. This paper outlines gender-budgeting norms for resource allocations as an essential prerequisite for India to achieve progress towards the SDG-5 on gender equalit

Overall, the infrastructure sector is the winner in this year's budget. The allocation to the sector will go up by 700 bn rupees in 2015/16 over last year. But this sector needs consolidation in policy framework starting from approval to implementation and an institutional mechanism for fair pricing and competition.

This brief examines India’s defence budget for 2023-24. It outlines the economic context for India’s latest defence allocations, and examines the drivers of growth, the broad distribution of resources among the defence forces, and the impact of such distribution on modernisation and the domestic defence industry. The brief posits that the new defence budget, coming on the back of a hefty mid-year upward revision of the previous alloca

It is gratifying to note that women's safety did figure in the Annual Budget 2014-15 with an outlay of Rs 200 crore. Good enough for the lowered expectations but not sufficient given the exponential rise in violence against women across the country. Same allocation for the Patel statue has made the matters worse by pitting living and breathing population against a memorial.

It is gratifying to note that women's safety did figure in the Annual Budget 2014-15 with an outlay of Rs 200 crore. Good enough for the lowered expectations but not sufficient given the exponential rise in violence against women across the country. Same allocation for the Patel statue has made the matters worse by pitting living and breathing population against a memorial.

The three-month-long budget session of the Indian Parliament, which began with the constitutionally mandatory address of President Pranab Mukherjee to a joint sitting of the two Houses on February 21, is both crucial and critical.

The country continues to face the sober reality of both rising threats and serious resource constraints.

The new numbers highlight New Delhi’s continued challenge of investing in its much-needed military modernization.

Budget FY2020 should break this dismal trend and increase capital expenditure to 2 per cent of projected GDP.

The government has to ensure that rural roads are constructed and not just "state of the art" modern highways. The interests of the rural people have to be protected, and the government has to regulate and monitor the private sector's participation.

What can and must be done is to reduce the incentives for avoiding or evading tax.

When it comes to the Budget, we should ask ourselves two questions: Is there a rationale behind it? Is there implementation on ground?

The Finance Minister has addressed the various deficiencies in agricultural production which are responsible for high food inflation. But the actual measures announced are not enough to shake up agriculture and as Dr MS Swaminathan pointed out - it will not make the youthful population take up farming.