The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...

-Frontline The Congress-led UPA seems to be betting heavily on the cash transfer scheme as a means to return to power in the next general elections. DECEMBER 2012 may go down in history as the month when the Congress party created its own “India Shining” moment: the moment when it started believing its own hype, and even deluded itself into thinking that its perception was so widely shared that it could provide...

-The Hindu The 117th Constitution Amendment Bill has failed to define low representation of SCs/STs which is necessary to make reservation in promotions possible There is certainly a strong argument to be made in favour of reservation for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in promotions but the 117th Constitution Amendment Bill that was passed in the Rajya Sabha is a poor attempt at achieving that goal. Article 16(4A) of the Constitution...

-The Hindu There is a need to identify cases in which the courts might have erred in applying the Bachan Singh principle that limits the imposition of the death penalty The Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution Bench judgment in Bachan Singh (1980) is the source of contemporary death penalty jurisprudence in India. Its major contribution was to limit the imposition of death penalty to the rarest of rare crimes, and for laying down...

-First Post If we are willing to believe the best practice examples of cash transfers from Brazil and Philippines, and trust the UPA on the fact that their cash-for-subsidy is going to be all hunky-dory, we also have a right to believe Sitaram Yechury’s concerns about the fancy plan. According to the CPM leader, the cash transfer is a ploy by the government to dismantle the PDS and systematically reduce subsidies. “This is...