This chapter is based on a first-of-its-kind study of tax incentives for philanthropy in India based on a review of tax incentives structures and available evidence on the impact on charitable donations across eleven other countries around the world. The chapter makes policy recommendations towards strengthening India’s tax incentives regime for philanthropy.
The research project was conceptualized and managed by Priyadarshini as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Social Impact and Philanthropy, Ashoka University, in partnership with the Center for Budget and Governance Accountability.
India’s social and political landscape has, in recent times, witnessed many significant transformations. This book offers a wide-ranging review of how India has, over the last few years, fared on the most critical dimensions of our collective life-politics, economy, governance, development, culture and society. The project of change entailed processes of both reform and re-formation: if reform was about correcting or improving what was considered unsatisfactory, re-formation was a bolder project that aimed to construct anew, anchored in a fundamental re-visioning of India in social, cultural and even moral terms. In many ways, the programme of re-forming India may have outpaced that of reforming India and even exceeded its own expectations. This volume provides an overview of the prevailing political imaginary of nationalism and of the current trends of public discourse in Indian democracy; it seeks to identify and interpret the transformations in state institutions and the public sphere and evaluate their implications for the future. Re-Forming India brings together reflections, from leading commentators in their fields, on some of these transformations-from the promise of economic revival and demonetization to the impact on gender relations, higher education and the media. Has the country been transformed in ways that were promised? Or indeed in other ways that had not been anticipated?
Urban Public transport in India, has been a long neglected sector. Most cities do not have structured public transport systems. Investments in the sector have happened only in a handful of large cities and are dominated by a few large initiatives, with most of the other cities not receiving any attention. This is leading to become an important bottleneck for the growth of the city and is affecting the quality of life of the residents. This chapter after identifying some high level problems in the sector, discusses the case for Public-Private partnership in Urban Transport and the need to systematically structure transparent, effective longer term contracts in the sector in India.
This volume brings together some of the most recent revaluations of the multifaceted oeuvre of V.S. Naipaul, comprising his novels, short stories, travel writing, historical accounts, and varied essays. Focussed on the author’s creative anxieties and strategies as much as on his provocative discourses on diverse nations, cultures, histories and communities across the globe, its closely critiques most of his major texts. The anthology also explores the extent of fixities and ambivalences in Naipaul’s much talked about Eurocentrism
Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. All are examples where humanitarian intervention has been called into action. This timely and important new volume explores the legal and moral issues which emerge when a state uses military force in order to protect innocent people from violence perpetrated or permitted by the government of that state. Humanitarian intervention can be seen as a moral duty to protect but it is also subject to misuse as a front for imperialism without regard to international law.
In Humanitarian Intervention, the contributors explore the many questions surrounding the issue. Is humanitarian intervention permitted by international law? If not, is it nevertheless morally permissible or morally required? Realistically, might not the main consequence of the humanitarian intervention principle be that powerful states will coerce weak ones for purposes of their own? The current debate is updated by two innovations in particular, the first being the shift of emphasis from the permissibility of intervening to the responsibility to intervene, and the second an emerging conviction that the response to humanitarian crises needs to be collective, coordinated, and preemptive. The authors shed light on the timely debate of when and how to intervene and when, if ever, not to.
Local government in India has a long history as a service delivery vehicle, but not as a vehicle for local level accountability. As a result elected local governments are not particularly accountable to their communities as they have a very limited set of powers and functions, in most cases. States still remain powerful, both in law and in the number of agencies they control at local level and most attempts to change have been hamstrung by the voluntary nature of the implementation of the 74th CAA. The net result is that urban areas continue to be governed by a plethora of agencies, with weak coordination and very little accountability. Coupled with this, a variety of implementation issues have led to fragmentation of service delivery institutions at the state and local level The constitutional and legal authority of the Government of India is limited only to Delhi and other Union Territories and to subjects, which state legislatures authorize the Union to legislate. Within this framework the Government of India through the Ministry of Urban Development and the Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation has been playing a significant Policy and Guidance role. Thereby national policy issues are decided by the Government of India which also allocates resources to the state governments through various centrally sponsored schemes, assists in making available debt finance through national financial institutions such as the Housing and Urban Development Corporation and the Life Insurance Corporation and supports local and state governments in accessing various external assistance programmes for housing and urban development in the country.
Despite increasing financial support by the central government, the quality of services in cities is declining. In order to remove the key roadblocks in improving service delivery, the central government has formulated the JNNURM for large cities. The outline of the new fiscal and policy support environment being contemplated at the national level. This paper analyses the key institutional challenges faced in delivering urban services in India and discusses the new approach adopted by the Government of India through the JNNURM.
