Word: chidambaram
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...Palaniappan Chidambaram wrote a budget of which middle-class Indians still wistfully dream. It slashed income and corporate taxes, encouraged foreign investment, and drove up the stock market. Last week, Chidambaram?Minister of Finance once again?gave India another budget. But this time, the people most likely to call it a dream are a group of Indians who usually have little reason to celebrate: the poor...
...India and neighboring South Asian nations. Within a short drive of some of India's new, glittering, urban landscapes, chronically poor villages where children are malnourished can be found. Poverty in rural India is breaking social bonds, driving mass migration to cities, and fueling lawlessness and violence. As Chidambaram told TIME last week: "Our villages were neglected for too long. There is deep concern in rural India?you can even use the word unrest...
...Chidambaram's budget is one of the more salient proofs that the new government has remembered its origins. The budget, which increases spending on a range of antipoverty measures, is easily the most ambitious effort to channel India's robust economic growth into solving its most enduring problem. "Given the resilience of the Indian economy," the Finance Minister said in his speech to India's Parliament, "it is possible to ... launch a direct assault on poverty and unemployment." He then earmarked $5.7 billion for a series of programs aimed at bolstering education, infrastructure, housing, nutrition and health care, especially...
...Conscious of the need to distribute the benefits of growth more evenly, business leaders welcomed Chidambaram's proposals rather than voicing disappointment that he had not cut India's fiscal deficit aggressively or launched bold moves to open up the economy to foreign investment. Says Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, a Bombay-based conglomerate, and one of the country's richest men: "65% of our population is in the villages; you have to have a budget that addresses them." Empowering the poor, many businessmen say, will eventually widen the foundations of the boom. "The emphasis...
...Measured by the only test that matters?its effect on helping the poor?what impact will Chidambaram's budget have? Some of his proposals have been widely welcomed. By asking banks to increase rural credit by 30% this year, Chidambaram gives hope to India's cash-starved farmers. But other plans are more controversial. The Finance Minister argued that subsidies "provide a measure of protection for the poor." Economic reformers didn't like that. "Our concern for fighting poverty should not mean that we continue with inefficient subsidies," says Jayaprakash Narayan, founder of Lok Satta, an NGO that focuses...