The bulk of the resources must go to the UPA Government’s eight flagship programmes: Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Mid-day Meal Scheme, Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission, Total Sanitation Campaign, National Rural Health Mission, Integrated Child Development Services, National Rural Employment...

BUDGET SPEECH 2011-2012 by DR. ABDUL HAFEEZ SHAIKH, Minister for Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs, Statistics and Planning & Development.

The challenge to the tax system to expand both the revenue base and progressively bring into the net larger number of taxpayers remains as daunting as ever. The object is not to ignore the generally beneficial impact of deregulation and tax friendly measures in providing a more conducive...

The increase in direct taxes has not been able to offset the decline that resulted from the reduction in customs tariff and decline in excise revenue. The task facing the policymakers now is to explore ways in which the tax ratio can be pushed up without going back on the basic elements of the...

The ambitious development plans for the Lancang-Mekong River Basin (LMRB) could have serious environmental, social, cultural and even geopolitical ramifications that could in turn destabilise the Mekong Subregion (MS). On the premise that frameworks for regional cooperation offer a viable route...

In this context, higher education as well as research and development (R&D) have long since ceased to be purely the domain of the developed Western economies. Numerous regions of the world, some in the emerging markets in particular – the often-cited BRIC countries – are catching...

This paper develops an index for measuring the economic power of governments viewed as entities in themselves. The basic idea is to encapsulate the economic representative power of a nation’s government in the international arena in as simple and parsimonious a manner as possible. For...

This policy review is set in the context of a highly uncertain global environment and a delicately poised domestic balance between growth and inflation. It should be read and understood together with the detailed review in Macroeconomic and Monetary Developments released yesterday by the Reserve...

Measuring progress towards Millennium Development Goal 6, including estimates of, and time trends in, the number of malaria cases, has relied on risk maps constructed from surveys of parasite prevalence, and on routine case reports compiled by health ministries. A critique of both methods are...