Policy Engagements and Blogs

Following the announcement of Budget 2016, CPR faculty analyse it from different aspects:

Sanjaya Baru writes in The Economic Times that ‘the nine pillars of the Modi-Jaitley macroeconomic strategy provide adequate basis for ensuring that India remains the world’s fastest growing large economy during the current fiscal, and hopefully beyond.’
Baru also adds in Mister Jaitley’s Mid-Course Correction that ‘the government has tried hard to maintain a balance between its social commitments and investment in the rural economy, on the one hand, and the ease of doing business and promotion of small and medium enterprise, on the other.’
In Budget 2016: The triumph of centrism, Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes how the budget ‘signals macroeconomic credibility by adhering to fiscal deficit’, while showing a ‘deep consensus on the welfare state’.
Rajiv Kumar says in Jaitley’s Political Budget that the budget bears the hallmark of Modi’s approach of ‘hastening slowly’. It continues with ‘broad based inclusion of, and appeal to, farmers, poor, women, and significant segments of the middle class, including small and medium entrepreneurs.’
Researchers at the Accountability Initiative analyse budget 2016’s commitment to the social sector. While Avani Kapur says in Social sector gets lip service that despite funding commitments to education, health, and sanitation (as key areas), a closer look at the numbers suggest only ‘modest increases’, Yamini Aiyar writes that the rhetoric does not add up to a ‘clear vision and narrative for social policy’ in Social sector investments in 2016 are no different than what they were in 2015.
Kiran Bhatty adds that the budget Evades the Real Issues in the Social Sector through ‘a new conceptualisation for the “social sector” that appears to be focused on skills, employment and entrepreneurship rather than education or even basic health.’

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