-The Indian Express Biometric authentication by PDS dealers defeats the unique identity scheme’s purpose. An aborted scheme in Madhya Pradesh that relied on once-in-a-year authentication can curb exclusion errors. Aadhaar is in the news today partly because of security concerns and partly because of reports that the poor are unable to receive PDS rations because of failures in Aadhaar authentication. Here, we will focus on the latter with an eye to look...
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Health Budget Could Have Been About People, But Now It's About Markets -Ravi Duggal
-TheWire.in The Budget speech pitch of ‘Swastha Bharat’ as ‘Samridha Bharat’ is deception, because the allocation for realising that is missing. Each year when the Budget is tabled in parliament, there is excitement and expectations. Should we say this used to be? Things have changed dramatically over the years. In the good old days, during the Budget session, we would wait excitedly to know about the price hike in petrol, diesel and kerosene....
More »Another Budget, Another Year of Ignoring Binding Laws on Rights -Nikhil Dey and Aruna Roy
-TheWire.in The making of the Union Budget has been a far too secretive and hidden exercise. Social sector expenditure and allocations related to policy announcements should be matters of open ongoing debate. On December 20, 2017, a group of 60 eminent economists sent an open letter to the finance minister stating: “We are writing to draw your attention to two urgent priorities for the forthcoming budget.” The first was to increase the central...
More »Size of tax rebates is large as compared to spending by agricultural & rural development ministries
Believe it or not, the total revenue foregone in 2017-18 on account of special tax rates, exemptions, deductions, rebates, deferrals and credits -- broadly termed as 'tax expenditures' (an indirect subsidy) – that was given to corporate taxpayers has been more than 50 percent of the expenditure incurred by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoAFW) and the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) altogether in that year. In other...
More »Troubles getting ration: At public hearing, some Aadhaar woes as people face fingerprint failure, slow server -Krishn Kaushik
-The Indian Express Since January, beneficiaries have been asked to authenticate their identity using fingerprints to avail foodgrain they are entitled to under the Food security Act. New Delhi: “Agar machine hata di jaaye, toh bohot acha hai.” As 60-year-old Shanno Devi said these words, 200 people gathered at a hall in central Delhi broke into applause. “Public pareshaan hai,” she added. Devi was talking at a public hearing on Monday about the...
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