Despite the importance of budgets, very little information is available about them in the Indian context. The Union budget gets a national coverage and information is widely available. Much less is know about state budgets. The good news is that most state governments now have websites, often with extensive information. As a first step, I’ve put together information on all of them in one place. I updated this page to reflect the websites in February 2011.
While you are here, you may also wish to read on why the Budget Website of the Government of India has the worst design possible. You may also be interested in the series on technology and governance in India with articles on making information in government websites more useful and transparent. You can also use my specialised budget search engine that is useful if you are looking for what happened to the budget on certain issues (e.g. mid day meal scheme) in various states. It basically searches the budget websites of various state governments and the Government of India.
Budget site of Government of India
You can get the complete budget, summaries, speeches, as well as economic surveys for many years. Chief limitation is that the documents are all in PDF format, making it difficult to use the information for data analysis without re-entering data.
Budget site of Uttar Pradesh Government
A fantastic site. It allows you to submit very detailed queries online to get budget details. Using the queries well may require a certain amount of understanding of government’s accounting practices. Detailed financial manuals are also available in the site. On the whole, one of the best budget sites in India. The budget speech is in Hindi.
Chhattisgarh
Complete set of budget papers is available. All documents are available in Hindi and English translations are available for many. The documents are in PDF, and infact one has to browse the site in PDF. This makes it easy to read Hindi alphabet, but makes it very difficult to browse. Further, the site has quarterly reviews of expenditure, various rules and acts, circulars of finance department, Chhattisgarh economic survey, and other details. Not all have been updated.
Karnataka
Full set of budget papers is available in PDF format. For 2007-08 Budget click here. Also available is the medium term fiscal plan. For news results and analysis of Karnataka budget, click here.
Goa
Some documents are available in PDF and some in HTML. To access full set of budget papers of 2007-08 click here
Harynana
For the 2006-07 budget click here. The 2007-08 budget was not available on 11 March 2007.
Jammu & Kashmir
For the latest available budget click here (the last set I was able to find online)
Manipur
The last available budget is of 2005-06 (11 March 2007)
Meghalaya
Last available budget was of 2005-06 as of 11 March 2007 click here.
Madhya Pradesh
This is a reasonably detailed site. Has access to full set of budget papers, budget manual and other related documents. There is also a query facility, where expenditure, receipts and details of ‘public account’ can be retrived for specific sectors, major heads, etc. One major limitation of the query is that it cannot be used to retrive details beyond the level of ‘major heads’.The site also has outcome budget and gender budget.
Orissa
An incredibly cluttered website without much information on budgets. Perhaps this will change soon.
Andhra Pradesh
A detailed site with summaries, query facility, etc. The current budget also has links to review of the state economy, and other details. A well made site. The site also provides access to previous budgets. One very interesting feature of the site is budget speeches from 1955 (i.e. the inception of the state) are now available online. These can be accessed from the main budget page.
Kerala
Has the complete set of budget papers in PDF format. The English version of the budget speech is not yet available online. Apart from that the site has an assortment of other interesting information such as public finance indicators from other states, plan expenditure of Kerala over all plans, etc. A highly informative site.
Punjab
The finance department website did not have any budget papers as of Feb 2011; not even from the previous years. Hopefully, more will become available soon.
Tamil Nadu
The 2007-08 budget is not available as on 11 March 2007.
More information available in Reserve Bank of India
Several papers on overall position of state budgets, and other documents that present a consolidated picture of state budgets are available.
thnaks a tonne,,,,,this is a nice thng yu hv done
Cheers
This is very useful.
can you mail me whatever you could get hold of, the highlights, analysis, comparision etc.,, on Orissa state budget 2007-08.
Best regards
Chandru
really a nice work.
Even the Government lacks such initiative.
They are telling there is right to information act.
but they are not revealing the information about budget.
really a good work.
Hey!! you have done a really good job… i was searching for state budgets and got ur site… will u be able to send me the documents that you have compiled with regards to state budgets? it will be very helpfull…
Thank you for this information. These links will be a great resource for those both within and outside of India who have a policy interest in public funding on the state level there. Oftentimes this information is extremely difficult to come by, which is regrettable in that public financing matters should be as accessible and transparent as possible if people are to trust the process. Thanks again!
Thanks for your work in publishing this information. Would you know where I could find archived budgets by state? For example, the Andhra Pradesh budget from 1995-1996 or the Gujarat budget from 2000-2001?
I’m working on my thesis written on state-wise distributions in India, and I need some earlier data. No one at the government will answer my emails.
Hi Vivek
Great work, very useful. I am trying to find out if Indian state governments publish any “tax expenditure” reports of revenue foregone from tax incentives. Do you know if they do? The Union Budget does contain this information.
Thanks Miranda. I do not know of any such report, and it sounds rather unlikely to me – After all, it would be suicidal for governments to make such aggregate reports.