-The Hindu ‘Banks told to re-verify and retrieve these payments if found to be erroneous’ Karnataka: The input subsidy that the State government paid to a farmer, Venkatamma, has been debited to one Vincent Rajkumar’s account. This is one of the nearly 40,000 suspected erroneous payments in the first-ever Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) disbursal of input subsides — given as part of drought relief — to around 18 lakh farmers...

-Livemint.com The government’s model law for agricultural reforms aims to allow farmers a wider choice of markets beyond the local mandi New Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is working on creating a common agricultural market that will improve the lot of farmers and the efficiencies of India’s notoriously inefficient farm-produce markets. The government put out a model law proposing a fundamental reset in the way agricultural markets operate on 24 April....

-The Times of India MUMBAI: Cyberspace SECurity experts are worried about the risk to customers using Aadhaar numbers and one-time passwords for authentication of financial transactions after it was revealed that a large cache of Aadhaar numbers had become public. Bengaluru-based think tank, Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), has published a report highlighting how 13.5 crore Aadhaar accounts have been exposed by government departments. The report, by Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali,...

-Firstpost.com Bhupesh Roy is from Assam but he is a long way from home. He has been working in the southern state of Kerala in the construction SECtor for the past four years and earns around Rs 500 a day, for an average of 20 days a month. “Two months ago, I fell sick. I had food poisoning and was admitted to hospital. I had fever too. For a week, I...

-Outlook Policy think-tank Niti Aayog has suggested outsourcing of public services to private hands in order to reduce dependence on the government administrative machinery. It has also recommended induction of specialists into the governance system through lateral entry, a move which, it says, will bring "competition to the established career bureaucracy". In its draft report on a three-year action agenda made public recently, the Niti Aayog has set a target of full- digitisation...