Welcome to the fifth edition of our newsletter, Budget Track.


CBGA continues to engage and work closely with governments, CSOs, academics, and nonprofit entities across geographies. This edition of Budget Trackgives you a quick glimpse into the depth of our work, and showcases some of our recent publications, opinion pieces and analysis, videos, webinars, podcasts, and interactive data visualisations across a range of thematic areas. It also presents our flagship Analysis of Union Budget 2023, which assesses the Union Budget 2023-24 across  social sectors, economic sectors, and responsiveness to marginalised sections. We have new developments on our OBI portal, which we welcome you to explore.


As always, we appreciate your attention, and we look forward to your feedback and suggestions on the work showcased here. 

Subrat Das
Executive Director, CBGA

INTERFACE

Our podcasts, videos and events

Dialogues on Global Financial Transparency


In the sixth episode of the online interview series, we spoke to Denise Velez Martinez and Klelia Guerrero Garcia on gender and its interlinkages with other issues, in the Latin American context.

The Budget Dialogue: A Webinar on Union Budget 2023-24


One of our flagship interventions since 2005 has been a Panel Discussion following the Union Budget. This year the Panel Discussion on the Union Budget 2023-24 was organised on February 6, 2023. The eminent panel comprised of Amitabh Kundu (WRI), Arman Ali (NCPEDP), Beena Pallical (NCDHR), Lekha S Chakraborty (NIPFP) and R Ramakumar (TISS). The discussion was moderated by Praveen Jha (JNU).

Roundtable on Policy Interventions for Gender Equality in India

CBGA, with support of UN Women India, brought together gender experts, feminist activists, and practitioners to present its research on transformative action towards gender equality in India. The roundtable discussion, held in December 2022, was a part of efforts towards the global commitments made at the Generation Equality Forum, 2021.  

Pre and Post Budget Consultations for Agriculture and Allied Sectors

CBGA organised a number of Pre-Budget consultations at the district level in seven States with the objective of communicating the key demands of the agriculture sector for the respective States' budgets. Further, a series of Consultations at the district and the State levels have been organised to demystify key announcements made for the sector in the latest Budgets of States.  

Videos on the Data Portal

This video explains important aspects of Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB), which is a crucial policy and budgetary strategy meant to ensure that governments spend money in ways that recognise gender-based challenges confronting women and persons of minority gender and sexual identities.

This video explains important aspects of Child Responsive Budgeting (CRB), a tool that seeks to integrate the concerns pertaining to children in the policy planning and budgetary frameworks.

A  well rounded Early Childhood Education (ECE) programme that caters to  a child’s needs is essential for society. This video presents an estimated cost for universalising ECE in India along with some policy recommendations. 

When GST was launched, one of the stated objectives was that it would improve tax collection for the government. As GST completed five years in June 2022, it is useful to look at how the GST collection has fared. This video presents a synopsis of the revenue collection from GST in the first five years.

INTERACTIVE VISUALISATIONS

How MGNREGS fared during COVID-19?

View All

Explore how employment and expenditure under MGNREGS changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These visualisations chart different indicators for MGNREGS at the state and district levels for the last five years.
How India Lives
How India Lives
Data Visualisations | CBGA India
Data Visualisations | CBGA India

IN-FOCUS

Policy briefs, papers and other outputs from our research

Walking the Tightrope: An Analysis of Union Budget 2023-24

This year’s analysis of Union Budget,  Walking the Tightrope,  examines priorities and trends in the latest Union Budget focusing both on revenue and expenditure aspects, particularly around the social sectors, agriculture, rural economy, climate actions, and provisioning of budgetary support for the marginalised sections. This publication complies with the principles of Universal Accessibility and WCAG 2.1 Accessibility Standard, making it accessible for persons with disabilities.

Mapping Policies and Tracking Budgets for Hand Hygiene in India

This study assesses the existing commitments at the national as well as the State level (Odisha), and their implementation at the district level. The gaps identified point towards the need for greater investment in promoting  hand hygiene. The results of the assessments and recommendations for improving hand hygiene programming at different levels have been published in a series of four reports and policy briefs each. 

Cost of Universalising Early Childhood Education in India

This study estimates the total budgetary allocation needed for making quality ECE available for all children in the age group of 3-6 years in India. It analyses the state  of investments for ECE services at present and offers policy recommendations. 

Building an Inclusive and Cohesive Public Climate Financing Framework

This study attempts  to demystify the existing framework of public financing for climate mitigation actions in Rajasthan and Jharkhand. In addition, it discusses critical measures for greater inclusivity and cohesiveness in public policy for accelerating low carbon development.

Building Knowledge and Capacity for Green Recovery of the State Economies in India

Following the sharp downturn of State economies due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this study  intends to build knowledge and capacities for facilitating green recovery of the select State economies in India. The study also highlights the challenges that sub-national governments face in accessing international climate finance.

Opinions and Blogs

Our team members have written opinion pieces on a range of topics related to the Union Budget. These focused on budgetary priorities for various sectors and other important topics like  education, agriculture, water and sanitation, gender-based violence, scholarships for minorities,  urban development, climate financing, fund utilisation, populist measures, and  budget transparency, among others. Read all our opinion pieces here.

IN-PROGRESS

Snippets from some of our ongoing work on policies and fiscal governance

New Developments on the Open Budgets India (OBI) Portal

Constituency Dashboard on the OBI Portal

We launched the Constituency Dashboard on the OBI portal, which presents the constituency-wise mapping of fiscal information for a range of schemes for selected States. Fiscal data for a number of development schemes has been mapped to the Assembly Constituencies and Parliamentary Constituencies in six States. The objective is to make fiscal information publicly available and locally relevant to enable greater participation of people, their elected representatives, and other stakeholders in public financial management processes. 

District Dashboard on the OBI Portal

In this Dashboard, fiscal data for 12 selected schemes have been mapped to the districts in six States. The Dashboard makes fiscal information for schemes at the district level easily accessible to different stakeholders, which can facilitate wider discussion about the performance of districts.

District Factsheets on the OBI Portal

These Factsheets present a detailed analysis of the fiscal performance of five schemes (MGNREGS, PMAYG, MDM, NHM and ICDS) for select districts.  Data availability for each scheme has been evaluated at the  district level.

Union Budget Explorer 2023-24

A Dashboard for the latest Union Budget has been developed and hosted on the OBI portal. We have digitised a large part of the data contained in the latest Union Budget, based on our understanding of what will be most relevant for analysis. It also has visualisations to make the Union Budget’s proposals and resource provisions easy to comprehend.  

INFLUENCE

Efforts by our partner organisations in India and other countries that have left a lasting impression

Strategic Intelligence Platform of the World Economic Forum

Southern Voice, a network of think tanks from the global south recently partnered with the Strategic Intelligence platform of the World Economic Forum (WEF) to co-curate the platform’s Transformation Map on Sustainable Development.

Pre-Budget Consultation by Feminist Policy Collective (FPC)

Following both its Consultations in the run up to the Union Budgets 2021-22 and 2022-23, FPC organised a Pre-Budget Consultation during 15-16  December, 2022 at the UN House, New Delhi. The Consultation aimed to inform and influence policy priorities for the Union Budget 2023-24 from a transformative financing and gender equality perspective.