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People's Budget Initiative

The key to substantive democracy is active involvement of the people in every aspect of governance; and budgets as an important instrument of governance are no exception. However, the budget-making process in India has been closed and largely opaque. It is in this context that a number of civil society organisations got together in 2006 to form a coalition - the People's Budget Initiative. This coalition has facilitated involvement of civil society in the budget process of the Union Government every year by creating a platform where civil society activists articulate key demands and expectations from the forthcoming Union Budget. The members of this coalition are from people's movements, grassroot organisations, national and international development organisations, academia and the media. CBGA serves as the Secretariat of People's Budget Initiative.

One of the core mandates of People's Budget Initiative is to organize a National Convention on the approaching Union Budget every year to build a common understanding among different stakeholders on critical gaps in public provisioning for important sectors and for arriving at a common set of prioritized policy and budgetary demands for different sectors. The Charter of Demands prepared in this National Convention forms the basis of advocacy with the policymakers and members of legislature in the ensuing months.

Since the central idea is to democratize budgets by giving people's voice its due space in the budget processes, the National Convention brings together, not just academicians or policy analysts working on various sectors, but also a significant number of participants with grassroots level experience. These participants are activists and groups working relentlessly on issues of human rights and socio-economic justice across different parts of the country, keen to engage with this process of influencing budget.

The activities of People's Budget Initiative are facilitated by an Organising Committee comprising the following organisations:

The People's Budget Initiative now aims to transform the advocacy efforts of the civil society and the legislature on policy issues into a campaign / movement on budget accountability in the country. In this regard, the following objectives have been proposed for People's Budget Initiative (PBI) for the coming years:

The process of civil society participation in formulation of the Union Budget, which has been carried out every year since 2006 under the banner of PBI, would be decentralised and carried out following a bottom-up approach;
The processes initiated under the banner of PBI will involve new stakeholders like, representatives of rural local bodies (i.e. Panchayati Raj Institutions), urban local bodies (i.e. Municipalities), collectives of workers / staff in government programmes, State Planning Boards/Departments, Members of State Legislative Assemblies, and Members of Parliament;
The efforts for opening up the process of budget formulation (as carried out with regard to the Union Budget until now) would be replicated at the level of States by the members of the PBI; and
The members of the PBI will put in place mechanisms for collecting evidence on implementation of government programmes/schemes across the States at regular intervals.

Budget Track

Budget Track Volume 8 Track-3

This special issue of Budget Track focusses on the key concerns relating to Taxation in India. In keeping with this, we have an interesting mix of contributions that look at some critical aspects such as expanding the fiscal space through taxation, tax havens, tax exemptions in India and more

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People's Budget Initiative

People's Budget Initiative A civil society coalition, which campaigns for the inclusion of people's movements, grassroots organisations and national and international NGOs in the policy processes that determine the priorities underlying government budgets in India.