There is a dearth of literature about fi scal marksmanship beyond total revenue expenditures and defi cits at the central or state level. It is of utmost importance to elicit a debate on the budgetary discipline around micro variables. These micro-level deviations result in macro-level errors in budget forecasting. The article explores state-level fi scal marksmanship in the context of medical and public health expenditure over the period—2002 to 2017. The deviations in capital health spending are high compared to those in revenue health spending. This may have an impact on the improvement in health over the long term.
Despite substantial socio-economic disparities in health, education, and nutrition outcomes, the government is pitching human development expenditure against capital expenditure. In a welfare state, social sector should be the centre of policy prescriptions. Instead of an imperfect assumption of trickle-down, the the government needs to realise that growth and development must go hand in hand.
Disparate factors, including non-affordability, inconveniently located units lacking access to basic urban services, limited access to suitable land, lukewarm private sector participation, and the lack of local capacity and technical expertise have seriously undermined the potentials of government housing schemes. The Union Budget 2022 gives a boost to affordable urban housing in terms of allocation against the backdrop of Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban) housing for all by 2022 and entails key structural reforms to address some of the deep-rooted problems in the housing sector.
The Union Budget 2022–23 proposes a step forward towards the implementation of the National Education Policy 2020 by invoking the increased use of information and communications technology as a policy instrument to repurpose education towards skill formation and to globalise Indian higher education.
The appropriateness of the criterion that pegs the ratio of public health expenditure to the gross domestic product—which is volatile—needs a re-examination. The targets for allocation and expenditure of financial resources for health need to be based on indicators that can be monitored.
While trying to balance the competing demands from the union and the states, the Fifteenth Finance Commission has done a commendable job, but has also sacrificed objectivity at times.
The implications of expanding government-sponsored health insurance schemes in India are analysed from a fiscal perspective. The experiences of two of the earliest and largest GSHI schemes of the country implemented in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are examined. The results suggest that the expansion of the GSHI schemes may skew expenditure away from primary and secondary care towards tertiary care if the fiscal space is limited. A competitive public health system may help in containing costs and the corresponding fiscal burden. The effectiveness of public spending through such schemes is ambiguous.
Fiscal sustainability is a key element for subnational governments in India as fiscal policy is the only instrument that can be used to correct economic malady. As far as state government finances are concerned, subnational financial stability can be understood as the capacity to generate adequate resources to afford their expenses on a sustained basis. An analysis of subnational fiscal sustainability, through a study of utilisation patterns of total debt receipts of state governments, is undertaken for 17 major Indian states during 1980–81 to 2014–15. The results indicate wide fluctuations among the states. While Kerala, Punjab, and West Bengal have shown poor and unproductive utilisation of debt receipts, Punjab has witnessed maximum instability.
The paper focuses on the changing trends in budget allocations of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, especially since the structural adjustment programme that came to be implemented from 1990 and how it has affected civic services, especially health and education. The paper concludes that it has increasingly directed public resources to the private sector and reduced access adversely access to both healthcare and school education for Mumbaikars.
Given that the reliability of official data has come into question, there is no way to understand the full extent of the issues that various sectors are facing without accurate data.
