-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government has floated a draft proposal to create a national database for people with disabilities. The proposal seeks to link the unique disability identification card - a smart card for all people with disabilities - to a central database to "ensure homogeneity and uniformity and streamlining the tracking of physical and financial progress of benefit delivery at all levels". The ministry had in October last year floated the...

-Business Standard Sector players await government's decision on future of Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana The government-sponsored Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) is set to undergo a overhaul with a proposal to have only public general insurers manage the scheme through a trust-like structure. Sources said the bids that would have been considered for new contracts have been left unopened as the stakeholders are awaiting the government's decision on its future progress. A senior public...

-Khabar South Asia Madhusudankati Sulabh Safe Drinking Water Project (SSDWP) uses modern filtration technology to create affordable potable water for residents. Madhusudankati: Access to affordable potable water has long been a dream for Manu Ghosh, a native of eastern India's arsenic belt. Groundwater contamination there has poisoned and killed people for years. "Groundwater is largely unsafe here and branded packaged drinking water is quite expensive for us," Ghosh told Khabar South Asia. She...

-The Hindu Over 3 lakh tonnes of food grain, enough to feed 15 lakh families, is pilfered from ration shops annually Chennai: The quantum of PDS rice pilfered from Tamil Nadu is so high that it is what 15.68 lakh families are entitled to draw free of cost every month. A whopping 3.76 lakh tonnes of rice from the public distribution system goes missing annually. In financial terms, this means a loss of...

-Business Standard Reduction in leakages in the Public Distribution System (PDS) is driven by marked improvement in states such as Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Bihar, noted economist and former member of the National Advisory Council Jean Dreze has said in a recent report. In an email interview to Mayank Mishra, he said the National Food Security Act should bring the bulk of the population under a single category with clear entitlements. Edited...