Policy UpdateDivya Natarajan Background The City Finance Rankings is a Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) initiative that evaluates, recognises, and rewards India’s Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) on the quality of their financial health and their improvement in financial…
Mining imposes lasting social and environmental costs on the districts where it occurs including land acquisition, displacement, pollution, and depletion of forest and water resources yet for decades the revenue generated from mining flowed almost entirely to state and central exchequers, with no earmarked mechanism to compensate the communities bearing these costs.
Infrastructure is a crucial foundation for India’s economic growth and social development, supporting industrial activity, employment generation, connectivity, and improved quality of life. Financing is therefore essential for ensuring a steady flow of funds for large infrastructure projects. Over the past decade, the Government has significantly increased public capital expenditure to support infrastructure-led growth and attract private investment. Public capital expenditure rose from ₹2 lakh crore in FY 2014–15 to ₹12.2 lakh crore in the Budget Estimate for FY 2026–27, highlighting the continued emphasis on infrastructure development.
Government purchasing is one of the biggest single levers any economy has on industrial demand, with over 1.6 lakh government buyer entities using the Government e-Marketplace (GeM), (Press Information Bureau, 2025) for procurement where cumulative Gross Merchandise Value reached ₹5 lakh crore before the end of FY 2024-25 (Press Information Bureau, 2025).
Kerala was among the earliest Indian states to formally recognise electric mobility as a policy priority. The Kerala Electric Vehicle Policy was notified by the Transport Department on 10 March 2019, with a validity period of five years from the date of notification. The policy was framed around the vision of embracing electric mobility as a tool to promote shared and clean transportation, ensure environmental sustainability, improve energy efficiency, and build a domestic ecosystem for manufacturing EV components within the state.
Economic growth is usually measured in terms of output, income and investment.
Ladakh is a high-altitude union territory in northern India that was created on 31 October 2019, bifurcated from the former state of Jammu and Kashmir after the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act. Geographically, Ladakh lies between the Karakoram range in the north and the Great Himalaya and Zanskar ranges in the south, with much of the territory sitting above 3,000 meters. It includes the upper Indus River valley, the Nubra, Shyok, Suru, Dras, and Zanskar basins, and features high plains, deep valleys, glaciers, lakes, and passes such as Umling La.