Prime Minister Manmohan Singh discusses Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Parliament on Friday with Business Standard's A K Bhattacharya.
The Budget session of the Parliament would be adjourned sine die on March 24. The session would be resumed on May 23 and will continue till June 8.
But their trajectory and direction have been largely influenced by politics and the political leadership's understanding of how the economy needs to be managed, explains A K Bhattacharya.
'There is a vision in the Budget, and the vision is to take India from a largely agrarian, rural economy into a fast-track digitalised economy.'
"You can't please all people. And the finance minister has done as good a job as was possible," said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an interview with T N Ninan, editorial director and chairman of Business Standard Ltd, on Monday after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced the Budget proposals in Parliament.
"You can't please all people. And the finance minister has done as good a job as was possible," said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in an interview with T N Ninan, editorial director and chairman of Business Standard Ltd, on Monday after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced the Budget proposals in Parliament.
There is one unenviable job out there that Pranab Mukherjee is doing and the rest of the country is up in arms to judge his performance.
The finance ministry has kicked off the budget exercise for 2005-06, discussing with four ministries the expenditure outlay and areas of austerity measures besides working on the broad contours of tax reforms.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured a Buddhist delegation that he will personally look into the case of recovery of foreign currency to the tune of Rs 7.5 crore from Gyuto Monastery, the transit home of Karmapa Ugyen Trinley Dorje, in Himachal Pradesh.
The UPA should realise that it cannot improve its own image, or that of the individual constituents of the alliance, including the Congress party, if it allows the prime minister's authority and image to weaken.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on Saturday said he is "worried" about the future of the Parliamentary system in the wake of a complete washout of the winter session of Parliament on the 2G spectrum issue.
The Modi government is notoriously honest about one fact: It does not listen to economists, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The new government that presents the full Budget for 2024-2025 in July should be ready to restructure the way divestment is managed and implemented, proposes A K Bhattacharya.
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, BJP chief J P Nadda and new party entrant Ashok Chavan and Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and L Murugan were among the 41 candidates elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha on Tuesday while Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh will witness polling on February 27.
President Murmu reached the new Parliament building in a six-horse buggy accompanied by the Presidential Bodyguards riding horses.
Presenting a report card on completion of 30 days in office on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi rued that he did not have the luxury of 'honeymoon' period as a "series of allegations" were levelled against his government in less than 100 hours.
'I urge the government to put aside vendetta politics, and reach out to all sane voices and thinking minds, to steer our economy out of this man-made crisis'
As the Congress batted for a national caste census with an assertion that rights should be proportionate to population, its senior leader Abhishek Singhvi on Tuesday created a flutter by saying "it will eventually culminate into majoritarianism", a remark he later withdrew from social media and blaming it on his staff.
Goyal said India has been recognised as brightest spot in the world in last five years.
Participating in the debate on the budget, leaders of parties like the Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, Aam Aadmi Party and Left launched an all-out attack on the BJP government for allegedly selling off the country's assets and PSUs to big industrialists.
Former prime minister Manmohan Singh said India is poised to take advantage of globalisation and engage in trade to finance its imports through exports.
Behind the GBS figures, to be revealed in the Budget next week -- lies a fierce tug of war between Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh eventually threw his weight behind the finance minister.
10 per cent for those who earn up to Rs 30 lakh a year and 25 per cent for those who earn more, suggests T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
The Opposition accused the government of bringing a populist budget.
The Congress on Thursday objected to Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar deleting some portions of Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge's speech from official records, saying he used no unparliamentary words and some of the expressions he employed were earlier used even by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
She posed for the traditional 'briefcase' picture outside her office along with her team of officials before heading to meet the President. She, however, was holding a tablet instead of a briefcase to present the Budget in a digital format.
Much before the honeymoon ended with the public, the Manmohan Singh government delivered a shock in the form of the fuel price hike -- an act of confident UPA -- to compensate the losses of 2010 Union budget.
Sheela Bhatt recounts the tension, suspense and disruptions during P Chidambaram's interim budget in the Lok Sabha on Monday.
India's finance ministers have played a crucial role in framing policies and initiating reforms to boost the economy.
'While China has been hiking its defence spending, India has done precious little in implementing the Manmohan Singh government's decision of raising a 90,000-strong China-centric Mountain Strike Corps,' says Rajeev Sharma.
Economic reforms have remained an article of faith for all the governments at the Centre in the last 18 years, irrespective of the political parties that formed them.
The battle on creating jobs is virtually lost. If the battle for achieving higher growth too is lost, then its political consequences could become difficult to manage, says A K Bhattacharya.
Composite dialogue likely to be formally revived; PM visit might also be marked with grant of trade MFN status. Nayanima Basu reports
'We need to put aside our anxieties about the Budget for now and possibly for long, and carry on as best as we can,' advises Shreekant Sambrani.
Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha presented 5 Budgets each while Jaswant Singh presented only one Budget.
The record of other prime ministers too shows how much can change when a prime minister is faced with the two-year challenge, says T N Ninan.
Slamming the Union budget as 'insipid' and lacking in stimulus for growth, the Congress on Saturday said it does not address the main issue of unemployment and describes the mindset of the government.
'The economy has to become the government's No. 1 priority, which it is not at the moment,' says T N Ninan.
Azad was elected to the Upper House from Jammu and Kashmir, which does not have an assembly currently after it was made a Union Territory with the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution.
'An entire operation was running systematically prior to the revoking of Article 370.'
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