Thanks to the Right to Information Act, 2005, and also the activism of NGOs and of the media, a culture of accountability is growing in the country. That is the good news. However, the media, NGOs and RTI activists can only do so much. They can focus the attention of the public and parliamentarians on egregious scams, but rarely address the systemic flaws that result in Leakage of funds. We have...
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UID and Public Health: Specious Claims by Mohan Rao
Among the many reasons cited for India to proceed ahead with the Unique Identification (UID) project -that it will facilitate delivery of basic services, that it will plug Leakages in public expenditure and that it will speed up achievement of targets in social sector schemes - the most specious is perhaps the claim that it will help India reach her public health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite impressive economic growth in...
More »One step forward
The government has taken the first concrete step to start disbursing subsidies for things like kerosene, cooking gas and fertilisers to individuals, families and farmers by direct cash transfer. A task force under the leadership of Nandan Nilekani, who heads the Unique Identification Authority of India, has been given the target of getting a pilot going by the end of the year. The transfer system will piggyback on the solution...
More »Dr. Mihir Shah, member, Planning Commission interviewed by Latha Venkatesh
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) completed five years this month. Pandurni village, in Nanded district in Maharashtra, is in high spirits. It has won the award for best performance in implementing the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for 2009-10. Around 1,500 people from this village are registered under this scheme, and over 800 have benefitted from it. Yahswant Suryavanshi is one of them. This owner of two hectares of agricultural land says...
More »Funding crisis hits efforts to make banking services easy for Nrega beneficiaries by Devika Banerji
A funding crisis has hit the government's efforts to leverage the banking correspondent model to provide banking services to the beneficiaries of its flagship rural employment guarantee scheme. Work has stopped in Orissa, the first state to adopt the model in all districts, after State Bank of India (SBI) refused to bear the cost of this financial inclusion drive for the beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee...
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