This research study examined the costs of providing urban infrastructure services. The margil costs of providing water supply are estimated, using data from several cities of India. The findings suggest that the supply of every additiol kilolitre of water imposes extra burden on the cities in the Rs. 2.62 to Rs. 5.05 range, as margil operating costs. Even based on these short-run margil cost estimates, some Indian cities such as, Jaipur and Pune, are found to be undercharging their water. As far as the other urban services are concerned, cities’ per capita expenditure on basic services such as street lights and toilets appeared to be abysmally low, let alone adequate, in any sense, to meet the demands of an increasing population. The study finds weak municipal finces still the core of the issue.

The study examines the effectiveness of direct tax administration in India through an econometric model, taking into account the tax collections. It constructs a tax enforcement index treating enforcement as a latent variable through principal component alysis, and attempts policy recommendations for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of tax administration. The paper takes tax rates as given. It does not attempt designing the tax administration; rather focuses only on the effectiveness of tax administration.

Submitted to the Committee to Examine the Impact of Overall Imposts on Petroleum Crude and tural Gas set up in the Ministry of Petroleum and tural Gas, this study takes a comprehensive look at the taxation of upstream petroleum sector as also tural gas starting with a review of the theoretical aspects and selected empirical research. It then focuses on the taxation element in the finces of two tiolised oil companies in the context of the Indian system of taxation of this sub-sector. For reference, it compiles some information on taxation of this sector in several oil-producing tions, and discusses related issues in fiscal federalism. Filly it makes suggestions in regard to possible reforms in the system of taxation of crude petroleum and tural gas.

Prima facie, budgets appear to be gender neutral. But the budgetary policies can have differential impacts on men and women due to systemic differences in their access to public services. Gender budgeting aims at examining the expenditure allocation through a gender lens. The project critically examines the approach and methodology of sensitising fincial allocations through gender budgeting initiatives in India. The alysis revealed that visible gender allocations in the recent budget — both specifically targeted programmes for women and pro-women allocations — constituted only 5 percent of the total budget; sectoral alysis revealed that higher budgetary allocations per se do not mean higher spending; there exist significant deviations in budget estimates and actual spending. Expenditure tracking surveys are required to alyse these deviations. There is also an urgent need to strengthen the system of unit cost and units utilised across gender to undertake periodic gender disaggregated benefit incidence alysis (BIA) to alyse impact of skewed gender differentials in the distributiol impacts of public expenditure. Policy implications arising from the alyses are that transparency of gender sensitive budgetary allocations needs to be ensured for accountability; however, earmarking public expenditure for women is only the second best principle of gender budgeting.

The project intended to take into account various aspects of development in Sikkim. It successfully locates major gaps in the process and finds out the causes for such gaps. Some constructive recommendations to overcome the difficulties faced by the state to achieve its desired developmental goals are suggested. The study is based on secondary data collected from state and central government documents, followed by extensive surveys in different parts of the state.

The report initiated at the behest of the Planning Commission takes stock of the prevailing economic and social conditions in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, and assesses the critical bottlenecks in its development. Based on detailed sectoral alysis, it recommends policy changes and institutiol mechanisms for sustaible development of this ecologically sensitive region. The report makes a number of suggestions in respect of sustaible exploitation of marine products, and high value agricultural and horticulture products; strengthening social infrastructure in keeping with the requirements of the thrust areas; developing physical infrastructure including connectivity between dispersed islands in the union territory, and with mainland India and neighbouring countries; fiscal consolidation and reform; and reducing risk factors by preventing/reducing the negative impact in the event of a tural phenomenon.

This project was directed at preparing a fiscal responsibility and budget magement bill for Rajasthan, embedded in a larger study of state and municipal finces, so as to eble funding of infrastructure needs of the state while at the same time preserving the fiscal correction path projected in the Bill.

The study conducted for the Planning Commission covering the period 1991-2003, alyses the problems and reform issues in state finces. The study provides an alysis of states’ revenue expenditure on public goods, merit goods, non-merit goods and non-goods highlighting changes taking place. The alysis brings out fluctuating ture of the tax revenues and decline in the contribution from non-tax revenues. The alysis concludes that states’ fiscal balance deteriorated sharply from mid-nineties which led to states’ aggregate debt ballooning to constitute over 300 % of its total revenues. This study also presents a comprehensive alysis of central transfers to states. The study makes a number of recommendations for achieving sustained improvement in state finces.

The objective of this workshop was to identify and arrive at policy recommendations to overcome various constraints to implementation of the recently ected tiol Rural Employment Guarantee Act. A group consisting of academicians, policymakers and executive authorities from the central and state governments and ground level activists participated in this workshop. A report titled, Implementation Issues of tiol Rural Employment Guarantee Act has been subsequently submitted to the Administrative Reforms Commission.

The NIPFP jointly coordited this project sponsored by the Asian Development Bank as part of its technical assistance programme. Under this, selective policy oriented research under the overall theme of "State Government Budget Constraints and Social Services" was carried out by experts in their respective fields.