Budget offers big push for rural infrastructure

The government is trying to pump in more money through innovative means into building up India’s infrastructure. In the 12th Five Year Plan, the budgetary estimates suggest that Rs 55,00,000 crore or US $1 trillion worth of investment would be required for setting up of infrastructure projects in the country. During his budget speech, Finance Minister P Chidambaram suggested a motley means of finance, using market mechanism which have hitherto not been fully tapped.

Need to scale up power availability in farms up to 2kw/ha: Sharad Pawar

The Union minister for agriculture, Sharad Pawar, on Wednesday informed the parliamentary consultative committee that farm power availability in the country needs to be scaled up to 2 kw/ha by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan. He said that without achieving this power availability it wasn’t possible to meet the projected demand of 280 million tonnes of food grains by 2020-21.

Mixed signals for vehicles, transportation

The tax proposal for vehicles and transportation in the Budget tabled by Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday is a mix of half-measures. A green scan blinks on the good news first—excise hike on personal SUVs from 27 per cent to 30 per cent; higher import duty on high-end imported cars and motorcycles; subsidies for electric vehicles to continue until 2015; and the government to buy 10,000 new buses for cities. In between the lines

Mission health for all

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared the 12th Five-Year Plan of India as a health plan.

Union Budget: challenges of public provisioning in India

The Union Budget for 2012-13 would be presented in Parliament on March 16. The Budget accounts for roughly half the total budgetary spending in the country every year, and the experience of the past decade suggests the nature and direction of public spending in the country is getting influenced strongly by the policies adopted by the Union government.

A step by step guide on how Union budget is formulated

The budget process in India, like in most other countries, comprises  four distinct phases.

Aircraft may monitor tropical cyclones over India

India may use aircraft in the near future for cyclone detection. Shashidhar Reddy, vice-chairperson of the National Disaster management Authority, announced he’s going to make a recommendation in the 12th Five-Year Plan for aircraft monitoring of tropical cyclones. He was speaking at the second international conference on Indian Ocean tropical cyclones and climate change, organised by the India Meteorological Department in collaboration with World Meteorological Organisation. The four-day conference began in Delhi on February 14.

Health goals of 11th Five-Year Plan unmet. 12th Plan hopes to achieve them

A recently released report of the Planning Commission's working group on National Rural Health Mission shows the government has been unable to meet the health goals set by the 11th Five-Year Plan. The group submitted its report for the Twelfth Five-Year Plan recently. The report scrutinised whether targets were met under the 11th Five-Year Plan, in an effort to guide the next plan starting April 2012.