In April 2003 CEHAT organized first budget orientation workshop for the activists and NGOs in Maharashtra. The workshop was organized in collaboration with National Center for Advocacy Studies, Pune and Samarathan’s Centre for Budget Studies, Mumbai. The Workshop was conducted by well-known budget analysts giving insights to the participants about the importance of understanding budget in development work and the need to use it as a tool for advocacy for strengthening social sector investment and expenditures.

Budget workshops were conducted in Mumbai with grass roots focus of issues and concerns. These were organized before the general election so as to generate a debate and create an atmosphere that would facilitate budget advocacy for larger allocations for the social sector, including the health sector. The objective was to educate the activists to undertake exercise of situation analysis of the budget and expenditure at the district and town level, to identify gaps in resource allocation and get directly involved in budget advocacy in their constituencies along with other organization at the local level.

This was followed by a series of Regional Budget Workshops in different parts of Maharashtra such as Beed in Marathwada, Nashik in Northern Maharshtra, Pune in Western Maharashtra and Wardha in Vidarbha for empowering activists to ensure their participation in Governance. These workshops were done in collaboration with other organizations at the local level. The workshops mainly gave overview of the General budget and the district/village level budgets like the Gram Panchayat budget, Zilla Parishad budget, linkages with district and village and analysis of various issues in the context of budget. The participants were trained in looking at budgets and action plan were discussed at the district /village level along with formation of core group who would take the action plan forward and to provide technical support.

Seminar on Maharashtra’s Budget: A Scrutiny of Development Discourse on 25th March 2011

On 25th March 2011 CEHAT along KHOJ(Quest for Knowledge, Hope, Opportunity, and JOustice),Department of Economics, University of Mumbai, PG Department of Economics, SNDT, Tata Institute of Social Sciences organized a Seminar on "Maharashtra’s Budget: A Scrutiny of Development Discourse". Some of the groups and concerned individuals in Maharashtra come together and initiated the process of taking the budget into an open forum that can lead to better informed intervention by social movements and civil society organizations. These groups mainly came together so as to initiate the process of taking the budget into an open forum that can lead to better informed intervention by social movements and civil society organizations. The main focus of the seminar was on social sector provisions in the state budget, and patterns of general government spending. The issues pertaining to social sector expenditure with specific reference to dalits, tribals, children and women and how to use budget analysis as a tool to monitor the government’s commitment to social sector. Around 100 participants including students, researchers, academicians and activists assembled together to raise their concerns based on a succinct analysis of the state budget.

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CEHAT supported KHOJ, the petitioner of the PIL for increasing health funding by providing specific budget information and budget analysis to the Mumbai High Court

Center for Enquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT) along with KHOJ (Quest for Knowledge, Hope, Opportunity, and Justice) did a budget analysis at the local and district level to prevent child malnutrition in Maharashtra. Read More....