-The Financial Express The scheme, part-funded by the World Bank, aims at pushing recharge of groundwater sources and efficient use at the local level. Rapidly-depleting groundwater in nearly a third of the blocks that were assessed in a study by the Central Ground Water Board (CWGB) has caused, The Times of India reports, the Centre to put the Rs 6,000-crore Atal Bhujal Yojana on fast-track. The scheme, part-funded by the World Bank,...

-Hindustan Times Under DBT system, beneficiaries are required to collect food subsidy in cash from their bank and then buy food grain from local ration shops at market price Septuagenarian Deventi Devi visited her bank, 6km from her village, thrice this month to withdraw her food subsidy credited by the government in her account under the Centre’s direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme. She returned empty-handed each time because the bank said the...

-The Economic Times blog Word has it that World Bank economists use “obviously fabricated” data from time to time. These are not Sitaram Yechury or Medha Patkar’s words, but those of Paul Romer, former chief economist of the World Bank, in a recent email exchange reported by Financial Times. Romer retracted them later, but this “may not end the controversy”, as The Economist mildly put it. This is not the first time...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Puducherry administration has approached the Union food ministry to seek a return to the system of distributing subsidised foodgrain, instead of crediting the subsidy to the bank accounts of beneficiaries. The Union territory administration has claimed the beneficiaries are not using the subsidy amount to buy foodgrain. "The chief minister recently put up this proposal before Union minister Ram Vilas paswan. The UT administration...

-The Hindu Many States have initiated ‘reforms’ of the public distribution system that are hurting millions of people India’s public distribution system (PDS) is in danger of being derailed in several States across the country. Recent disruptions of the PDS have taken different forms, from compulsory biometric authentication to so-called direct benefit transfer (DBT). The consequences are alarming, but tend to go unreported. Biometric mix-ups Jharkhand is a prime example of this problem. By...