-The Hindu Measures on urea, LPG, kerosene to go The Modi government is putting on hold its plans for some key economic reforms Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced in his maiden Budget last July. These include decontrol of urea prices, fewer subsidised cylinders a year and withdrawal of kerosene from the public distribution system (PDS). Fertilizer Minister Ananth Kumar told The Hindu that the administered price controls for urea would stay. "We...

-Oxfam Blog Vanita Suneja, Oxfam India's Economic Justice Lead, argues that India can't progress until it tackles rural poverty. This entry was posted on 3 February 2015. More than 800 million of India's 1.25 billion people live in the countryside. One quarter of rural India's population is below the official poverty line - 216 million people. A search for economic justice for a population of this magnitude is never going to be...

-Business Standard The move will reduce demand for diverted PDS kerosene by improving availability of non-PDS kerosene in the open market The petroleum ministry on Tuesday announced that the government has freed regulatory control over storage, transportation and sale of kerosene sold outside of the public distribution system (PDS). To facilitate the move, aimed at increasing availability of white or market-priced kerosene, the government has amended the kerosene (restriction on use and fixation...

-The Indian Express The finance minister plans to scrap the supply of subsidised kerosene through the public distribution system (PDS) and high time, too. To begin with, why has the kerosene subsidy needed reform for decades and yet reform never materialised? Kerosene obtained through the PDS, being cheaper, is used to adulterate diesel and petrol. Kerosene leakages in the PDS are estimated to be 40 per cent of total allocations. The diversion...

-The Hindu Why do we not have a clear answer on just how much grain is leaking out of the Public Distribution System? If you're interested in just what ‘leakage' means and how it's worked out, here's a little primer. So first: what is leakage? Since we know anecdotally that many households do not get all the grain they are entitled to, we can assume some is being illegally diverted. It's...