-Outlook Why free mobiles to BPL folks is a bad idea  “Here you don’t have money to provide them food, and you are thinking of giving them phones,” scoffs a minister in the UPA government, obviously off the record. His comment mirrors the general negative reaction to the ‘Har Haath Mein Phone’ scheme mooted by the Planning Commission, which aims to provide a free mobile phone to each below the poverty line...

An online petition has been started to help a soldier who has to fend for himself for treatment of paralysis caused by injuries while fighting terrorists during 26/11 Mumbai terror attack  NSG commando PV Maneesh, injured and paralysed in a grenade blast during the operation in Hotel Oberoi and subsequently awarded the Shaurya Chakra, has to foot the expenses of his Ayurvedic treatment on his own. The treatment will continue lifelong. He...

-The Hindu Almost a year after Saranda was wrested out of Maoist control by security forces, large numbers of tribal families living in the dense forests of the Jharkhand district have found themselves left out in the cold when it comes to government assistance. “We discovered that just about 3,000 of the 7,000-odd forest dwelling tribal families in Saranda are on the BPL [below poverty line] list,” says Rural Development Minister Jairam...

Online cards issued under the government's flagship rural jobs scheme will now include the beneficiary's 12-digit 'Aadhar' number issued under the Centre's multi-crore unique ID project that has drawn more brickbats than bouquets.  Over the next three months, state governments will update the registration data, including Aadhar numbers, of beneficiaries under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in an exercise to weed out ghost cards.  "This will help us assess...

Unless data gathering for the Socio Economic and Caste Census is refined, the exercise could cast out the real claimants. Have the census enumerators recently knocked on your door with swanky tablet computers in hand? If they have, it's because they have begun to go door-to-door in most States to complete the final phase of the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC). This mammoth exercise is being coordinated by more than...