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It was a sultry day on July 3, 2021, and the political temperature in the hill State of Uttarakhand was equally hot as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was set to announce a new Chief Minister, third one in the past four months. Names of bigwigs were making rounds in the political corridors and…
The Union Budget for 2025-26, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday, is a mixed bag for Tamil Nadu. The DMK governmentâs slew of requests, including allocation of funds for the Chennai Metro Rail Project and disaster relief, did not find a mention in the Budget speech, while broader measures, including income tax benefits…
Read More “Union Budget 2025: Itâs a mixed bag for Tamil Nadu” »
The Union Budget for 2025-26, presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday, is a mixed bag for Tamil Nadu. The DMK government’s slew of requests, including allocation of funds for the Chennai Metro Rail Project and disaster relief, did not find a mention in the Budget speech, while broader measures, including income tax benefits…
Read More “Union Budget 2025: It’s a mixed bag for Tamil Nadu” »
This piece analyses the Union Budget 2025-26 for its employment generating impact from both a macro-economic as well as a micro-economic perspective. It does it by examining two sets of proposals: the first is the flagship personal income tax (PIT) slabs revision; and second, the ‘schemes’ announced in the classic government way for translating budget…
Read More “Union Budget 2025: Job schemes don’t look promising” »
Representational image of roadwork in progress | Photo Credit: E. Lakshmi Narayanan The annual growth in budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways continued to see a decline for the second year in a row. The Ministry received an allocation of ₹2.87 lakh crore. This is a mere 2.4% increase as compared…
Read More “Union Budget 2025 hikes funds for roads by 2.4%” »
Statistical mathematician Nassim Taleb, in his seminal work, The Black Swan, defines ‘Black Swan moments’ as highly improbable events with significant impact that are often rationalised with hindsight. In 2008, the global financial meltdown, a Black Swan event that began in the U.S., wiped out trillions of dollars, causing traders to scramble to fulfil margin…
Women work at a garment unit in Madurai. | Photo Credit: G. Moorthy Assuming a conservative GDP growth rate of 10.1% for FY26, the Budget accords priority for fiscal consolidation. The ‘cautious’ GDP forecast appears to be realistic for tax revenue projections, given the uncertainties in the global economy and growth slowdown in the domestic…
A farmer walks across a wheat field on the outskirts of Amritsar. | Photo Credit: AFP A Budget is the response of a government to the challenges in the economy. The effort in the Economic Survey 2024-25 was to spin a positive narrative on the state of Indian agriculture. It claimed that Indian agriculture remained…
Read More “Agriculture is fiscally neglected in the Budget” »
The Union Budget 2025-26 earmarked ₹6.81 lakh crore — or 13.4% of total Central government expenditure — for the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Of the MoD’s total budget, ₹4.92 lakh crore, or 72%, is meant for the Defence Services (primarily the Army, Navy, Air Force and the Defence Research and Development Organisation). About ₹1.61 lakh…
Read More “Union Budget 2025: Defence budget falls short of expectations” »
Students eat their lunch under the mid-day meal scheme in Vijayawada. | Photo Credit: The Hindu The Budget speech mentions six principles of ‘Viksit Bharat’: zero-poverty, quality education, comprehensive healthcare, meaningful employment, inclusion of women in economic activities, and farmers’ well being. This is followed by 10 broad areas that the proposed development measures span….
Read More “The social sector is again the target of spending cuts” »