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Tag Search: “public finance”

How serious is the government about Swachh Bharat Mission?

The recently announced Union budget 2015-16 has reduced the central government allocation for Swachh Bharat Mission – the flagship sanitation programme of the government. In this article, Sangita Vya...

  • Perspectives

The 2015-16 Union budget and India's growth

The 2015-16 Union budget – the first full-year budget of the new government – was presented last week. In this article, Nirvikar Singh, Professor of Economics at the University of California Santa Cr...

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Three concerns about AAP's promise

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has come to power in Delhi with a historic mandate. In this article, V Ramani, Partner at Access Advisory and former bureaucrat, flags three key concerns around their approa...

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Public spending on health coverage: Are we raising the right questions?

The National Health Assurance Mission – India’s first move towards Universal Health Coverage – is expected to be launched soon. In this context, this column analyses the extent, distribution and qual...

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How much does India spend on elementary education?

There has been a significant policy focus on expanding elementary education in India in recent years. Yet, estimates of public and private expenditure on elementary education are not available. This ...

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Taxing Tobacco

The steep increase in excise taxes on cigarettes in this year’s Union Budget is a welcome move. However, this column argues that unless more commonly consumed bidis are also taxed heavily, the public ...

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Do location-based incentives promote industrialisation?

In a bid to industrialise the relatively under-industrialised states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, the government implemented a tax incentive and capital subsidy scheme in the two states in 20...

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Increasing tax compliance through social recognition

To enhance government revenues, it is important to tackle the menace of tax evasion. This column discusses an experiment that tests whether sharing a firm’s tax compliance status with neighbouring fi...

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Goods and Services Tax in India: Challenges and prospects

The Finance Ministry recently announced that the Goods and Services Tax will soon be a reality. In this article, M. Govinda Rao – member of the 14th Finance Commission – discusses the challenges and ...

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Modi's first Budget for India: Disappointing but retrievable

In this article, Arvind Subramanian contends that while Modi’s first Budget was good on vision, it fell short in terms of fiscal adjustment, budgetary transparency and credibility, and specificity an...

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The Goods and Services Tax: Light at the end of the tunnel?

As the Goods and Services Tax is inching towards implementation, a major overhaul of the Indian tax system has also been in progress. This article discusses three key strengths of the ongoing process...

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Why taxing property is essential for local government accountability

With rapid decentralisation and urbanisation, wealth is increasingly vested and locked up in land and property in India. In their previous article, Kapur and Subramanian emphasised the importance of ...

  • Perspectives