Run by the students of Udaan
MumbaiWeekly Volume 01 Issue 10
metro
FRIDAY, 16 March 2012
feature
arts
sports
UPA govt presents India‟s Rail and Union budget
Defence spending will rise 18 percent to Rupees 1.94 trillion. Revenue and taxes budget in Parliament on 16 Friday 2011. will be Rupees 10.8 trillion, non tax The following was proposed by him in revenue is pegged to be 1.64 trillion and the following sectors. disinvestment should be in the target of Fiscal Deficit will see a drop from 5.9 rupees 300 billion in the year 2012 percent of GDP in 2011-12 to 3.9 2013. Service tax will be raised from 10 percent of GDP in 2014-15. Borrowing percent to 12 percent baring the Gross market borrowing seen at 5.7 seventeen items in the negative list from trillion rupees in 2012-13 Net market 2012 - 2013. Corporate tax structure borrowing seen at 4.8 trillion rupees in will remain the same however income 2012-13, excluding treasury. Total tax exemption limit will be raised to expenditure in 2012-13 seen at 14.9 Rupees 2,00,000 for individuals. Coal trillion rupees, up 29 percent, Plan used by ower plants will be completly expenditure budgeted at 521.25 billion exempt of import duty however gold rupees in 2012/13, up 18 percent.
The finance minister presented the
will be charged double on basic custom duty. It was proposed to keep subsidies under 2 percent of the GDP and futher reduce it to 1.7 percent in the next 3years. On growth and inflation finance Minister mentioned headline inflation for the net few months and stability to set in there after. Economy is expected to grow at 6.9 percent in 2011 -2012 and improve to7.6 percent in the next year. the budget introduced some policy changes namely, airlines will be allowed to raise $1 billion as working capital by external commercial borrowing. (continued on page 2)
Above: A man walks in front of a billboard in Mumbai on 16 March 2012. Pratham Gokhale / Mumbai Weekly. Left: People stand in a crowded sub-urban train compartment in Mumbai on 14 March 2012. The railway budget was presented at the parliament on 14 March 2012, to which there were mixed reactions. Though the budget had plans for modernisation of Indian Railways, it was highly criticized for the hike in ticket fares. Pratham Gokhale / Mumbai Weekly
190 children suffer from Holi colour poisoning India‟s festival of colours, Holi, took a deadly turn in the city with around 190 people including children being hospitalized for colour poisoning. The victims of the toxic celebrations were admitted to Sion Hospital and another 12 to Rajawadi Hospital after they complained of giddiness, burning sensation on skin, nausea and vomiting. The State has set up a high-
level inquiry into the episode. The hotbeds of the colour poisoning, the Police said, were areas like Shastri Nagar, Shahu Nagar and Lokmanya Tilak Nagar in Dharavi, where panic spread fast as news travelled of children fainting, after playing with the coloured powders on Holi. Between 1pm and 2pm, over 100 patients from these neighborhoods were rushed to Sion
Hospital-many in police vans-with similar complaints. Till late evening, there was little clarity on the source of the poisoning or its precise nature. The police suspected the toxic substances may have come from a Dharavi dumping ground where harmful effluents are thrown by the area's leather tanners. Soon after the incident, Maharashtra chief minister
Prithviraj Chavan ordered a detailed probe by a sixmember committee into the incident. The sixmember team is headed by Medical Education Department's Secretary, IS Chahal, and will submit its report in two weeks. The committee will fix responsibility and suggest preventive measures. (Photo feature on „Holi‟on page 5)
Above: A policeman speaks to children affected by color poisoning during the festival of „Holi‟ at a hospital ward in Mumbai on 8 March 2012. Around 200 children and adults were admitted into hospitals in Mumbai after celebrating Holi, a festival in India with alleged toxic color. Chirag Sutar / Mumbai Weekly