An autonomous research institute under the Ministry of Finance

 

The Role of Public and Private Healthcare services in Covid Testing and Treatment

23/10/2020

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(Co-authored with Mita Choiudhury)
 
In a public health emergency, the role of the government is expected to be dominant as private provisioning is likely to be sub-optimal. Yet, in a health system, which is largely dominated by the private sector, a public-private interplay is inevitable. In …

Time to end gender based discrimination in the Hindu Succession Act, even in the matters of devolution

22/09/2020

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In its recent judgment, the Supreme Court ruled that a daughter has the same rights as a son in an ancestral property under the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, regardless of when the father may have died. The principle law - the Hindu Succession Act, 1956 (HSA) - originally …

Covid-19: Assessing fiscal position of government in first quarter of 2020-21

08/09/2020

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(Co-authored with Medha Raju) 
 
In this post, the authors analyse the trends in the revenue, expenditure, and borrowings of the central government in the first quarter of 2020-21, based on the data released by the Controller General of Accounts. They argue that the contraction in revenues …

Subsidies, merit goods, and fiscal space - II

08/09/2020

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(Co-authored with Satadru Sikdar)
 
In Part I of this two-part series, the authors presented their estimates of total budget subsidies, and their merit and non-merit components. In this part, they discuss the relationship between subsidies and the delivery of specific public services, the comparative efficiency …

Subsidies, merit goods, and fiscal space: An aspect of public expenditure in India - I

04/09/2020

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(Co-authored with Satadru Sikdar)
 
Large fiscal deficits and even larger public-sector borrowing requirements are a regular feature of the fiscal landscape in India. In this context, this article argues that rationalisation of the prevailing large volume of non-merit subsidies should constitute a major component of deep …