Transparency and Accountability in Government Budgeting in India
This paper presents a brief overview of some of the important issues pertaining to transparency in and accountability for Government budgeting in India. Over the past two years, the International Budget Project (IBP) have worked towards developing the Open Budget Questionnaire, “a measurement tool to evaluate public access to budget information from the perspective of civil society organisations, which also covers other budget process issues in order to explore ways of improving public understanding and involvement in the budget”. CBGA had contributed to this endeavour of the IBP by completing the questionnaires (used for this study) as the participant from India, and the concerns raised in this study set the context for the present paper. Taking a cue from the IBP study, we present some relevant information and analysis on issues vis-a-vis the Union Budgets in India, which we feel are of primary concern from the perspective of the poor and vulnerable sections of India’s population.
