The first article is a Review of the Status of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment on Panchayati Raj in 1922 by RGICS Senior Research Associate, Arnab Bose. It has been 30 years since a major step was taken by the Parliament to establish and strengthen the third tier of elected government at the local level. As we have seen in many other cases, though the laws were highly progressive in intent, even in enactment and adoption, these got diluted, and the attenuation was severe at the stage of implementation.
The early formative stage of Panchayati Raj is obvious in the next article which is about the state of the Panchayati Raj in Uttar Pradesh, contributed by Dr Chandrashekhar Pran, the founder of a campaign called “Teesri Sarkar Abhiyan”. He shows some stark facts about the state of Panchayats in UP based on analysis of the results of the 2021 elections to Panchayats in UP.
This is the month when the Union Budget was presented by the Finance Minister on 1st Feb 2022. The Budget was hailed as a pro-growth budget, where the government has significantly increased the outlay for capital expenditure, mainly for infrastructure. This issue of Policy Watch thus carries a compilation of comments on the Union Budget, designed to present a spectrum of views on the Budget.
The first is an article by Dr Santosh Mehrotra, formerly of the Planning Commission and JNU and now visiting professor at the University of Bath, UK. It appeared in The Wire. We also carry a link to a video interview with Prof Mehrotra. The second article on the Budget is by Shri Praveen Chakravarty, Chairman Analytics of the Congress Party. It appeared in the Indian Express.The third article on the Budget is by Pushparaj Deshpande, Director of the Samruddha Bharat Foundation. This appeared in the PolicyCircle.org.
Taken together, the three articles explain what the Budget has not addressed – health, education and weaker section welfare, as well employment creating segments of the economy – MGNGEGA, MSME and the informal sector.
Policy Watch: Governance and Development – February 2022
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