February 11, 2026
Budget 2026: Big schemes, bigger gaps in social spending
Social sector spending drops to its lowest in a decade. Key schemes for housing, water, and minorities remain underutilised even as allocations shrink further.
Avani Kapur
Avani Kapur is founder and director of ResGov as well as a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR). Prior to this she was leading the Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research. She has spent a decade building evidence to strengthen the governance and delivery of government programmes across education, health, sanitation, and nutrition. Avani is a Tech4Good fellow and an alumna of the London School of Economics and Smith College, Massachusetts.
Articles by Avani Kapur
February 4, 2025
Budget 2025: Understanding social sector spending
While the union government's total expenditure has risen by 7 percent in 2025, the allocation for the social sector has not grown proportionally.
February 3, 2023
Budget 2023: Capital expenditure grows at the cost of social welfare
Social sector spending falls below 20 percent for the first time since 2009 while capital expenditure increases for the third consecutive year.
February 8, 2022
Budget 2022: A missed opportunity
Rather than increasing investments in social welfare schemes that protected the most vulnerable during the pandemic, Budget 2022 focuses on building infrastructure and capital expenditure.
September 1, 2021
NREGA is crucial to rural India in 2021
While it claims to be a demand-based scheme with an elastic budget, NREGA’s failure to support the rural economy in 2021 indicates otherwise.
April 24, 2020
Supporting field workers to combat COVID-19
Field workers are playing a critical role in helping communities access government schemes and services, and we need to invest more in this cadre.
Load More