-The Hindu Launched in 2006 by the JD(U)-BJP government at the time, the scheme provided money to all girls who enrolled in Class IX through their schools to buy themselves a cycle. The first independent, scientific evaluation of the impact of Bihar's cycles-for-girls programme has shown that the scheme significantly improved female school enrolment and substantially reduced the gender gap in secondary school enrolment. The study, by Karthik Muralidharan, an economist at...

-Press Information Bureau The India Rural Development Report 2012/13 was released here by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, Government of India. The Report was prepared by IDFC Foundation in collaboration with network partners, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), the Institute for Rural Management Anand (IRMA), and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), with contributions from several other researchers, experts and civil society organisations. On...

-The Hindu Aadhaar is mandatory for 28 welfare schemes in three districts The Supreme Court decree that ruled out making an Aadhaar number mandatory for delivery of government services, puts a spoke in the wheel of several ambitious plans announced by several departments of the State government to link crucial services to Aadhaar. These plans range from Direct Benefit Transfer scheme for kerosene and LPG subsidies to using the number to weed out...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday dealt a crippling blow to UPA's showpiece Aadhaar scheme by ruling that it can only be issued to those with proven Indian nationality and cannot be mandatory for accessing public services and subsidies. "In the meanwhile, the Aadhaar card cannot be made mandatory. If anyone applies for Aadhaar card, then you have to verify whether he is a citizen of India...

Bihar Government's programme of distributing bicycles to school girls may be a modest intervention but is leading to big changes. A new research-based paper, brought out in August 2013, corroborates the success of the programme and testifies that it is leading to improved school enrollment of girls and arresting their dropout rates (See links below to read full paper and earlier studies on the subject).   Based on econometric and statistical models,...