If the Unique Identity project is such a good thing why is the man heading it unable to answer simple questions about it? Since the publication of his doorstopper of a book Imagining India in 2009, Nandan Nilekani has done a superb job of reinventing himself. The former head of software giant Infosys Technologies was overnight cast in the role of a visionary with his unabashedly free market prescription to turn...

Sanjay Dixit is a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, a statutory body set up under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). He was initially chosen by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi to head an NREGA cell in Uttar Pradesh where he has become an official whistleblower of sorts, unearthing several instances of fund diversion in many districts. He talks about the malaise in the five-year-old law that...

Even as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act enters its sixth year, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said in Delhi on Thursday that cash transfers were the answer to the eternal questions about inefficiencies in government schemes. He had tried out direct cash transfers in his effort to give Bihar’s girls bicycles, he said, and discovered that the programme had a “92 per cent success rate”. No programme, he said,...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday asked States to consider waiving mandi taxes, octroi and local taxes for taming inflation, which affected the poor “harder” and posed a serious threat to the country's growth momentum. He said much of the responsibility for checking price rise lay with the States. “Much of what needs to be done... lies in the domain of State governments... There seems to be a strong case for waiving...

The government has a plan to reach welfare to the poor without wasting money. It wants to put hard cash in their hands instead of spending on welfare programmes. To begin with, it wants to end the public distribution system of food grain and give money directly to the people. Its logic: the new system of cash transfer will plug Leakages and save an enormous amount of money. But is it...