With nearly one in six elementary school teachers not professionally trained, India must improve its spending on teacher training–just 2% of the 2018-19 budget allocated for Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (‘holistic education programme’) was spent on teachers’ training institutes.

It is clear by now that the rural and urban people are not separate topographical categories. The social, economic and political linkages between both centres are vital to enrich the economy. The Government must pay heed

India is a federal country, but the Constitution renders a strong unitary bias in many spheres, including the domain of Centre-state fiscal governance. The institutional measures to augment resources, over the years, including the recent Constitutional amendment on Goods and Services Tax (GST) were steps that have strengthened this hallmark of strong centralisation.

The allocation for the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) in Budget 2019 is likely to increase from Rs 52,800 crore (budget estimates) in the current financial year 2018-19 to Rs 59,039 crore in the next financial year (2019-20), an increase of 11%, according to the medium term expenditure projection statement presented to the Parliament in August 2018 by the ministry of finance.

The upcoming Union Budget to be announced on 1 February would be the sixth Union budget of the NDA government. Though an interim budget, given that this is an election year, there is a high possibility that it will be a populist one. It will be interesting to see what the budget kitty holds in it for school education.

“Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value”, remarked Joe Biden, former American Vice President during the 2008 Presidential Campaign. Against the backdrop of high incidence of gender based violence, low sex ratio, high maternal mortality rates, gender gap in wages, and other indicators that bring to light the gender based challenges confronting us today, the question of what is valued- as reflected in government budgets, assumes significance.

The Prime Minister launched the National Nutrition Mission in March this year, with an objective of accelerating improvements in nutrition levels in India, for which annual targets have been set for reduction in levels of stunting, undernutrition, anaemia and low birth weight, to be achieved by year 2022.

To curb illicit finance, it is crucial to understand the tools, vehicles and arrangements that facilitate it. Illicit finance is generated through tax abuse (avoidance, dodging and evasion) by multinational companies and elites, crime, corruption, trade manipulation and abusive transfer pricing methods. Its cross-border flow is known as illicit financial flows. The word ‘illicit’ indicates its systemic and abusive impact on the realisation of human rights and the development agenda, especially of developing countries.

On 26 May this year, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) declared Class XII board examination result. The next day, a number of regional and national dailies reported suicides by Class XII students in various states, including Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Uttarakhand. The reason for this was said to be securing poor marks or failure in the exams.

The country has been witness to an emphasized narrative on black money in the past few years. The Indian government defines black money as “any income on which the taxes imposed by government or public authorities have not been paid”.

The official statistics provided by the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) under the ministry of commerce and industry shows that between January 2000 and December 2017, India received $368 billion of foreign direct investment (FDI). It also says that Mauritius was the source of $125 billion of FDI, meaning this tiny island nation contributed 34 percent of the total FDI inflows to India in this period.

The recent wave of sexual violence reported from across the country – against women in general and little girls in particular – is not only disturbing but also thought-provoking. The response of the civil society, media and government towards these deplorable instances has largely been ad hoc and reactionary, both in terms of form and substance.