The people who uncovered the fact liken it to "encountering a mass grave of people who do not matter" in India's seat of power: At least 10 homeless people are dying on the streets of Delhi every day, the rate peaking as the summer rolls on. After a six-month examination of official records at crematoria, police stations and graveyards across India's richest city, Smita Jacob and Asghar Sharif, analysts with an...

In an innovative move, biometric cards will be given to those working under NREGA to bring more transparency in the implementation of the Centre's employment guarantee programme, facing complaints of gross irregularities and malpractices in many parts of the country. A decision to prepare biometric database of Mahatma Gandhi NREGA workers "within 12 months" has recently been taken by the Rural Development Ministry here in a meeting which was also...

The government should issue food stamps directly to families living below poverty line (BPL), instead of subsidised food, to ensure food security of the poor, an industry lobby said in a report. The Federation of India Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) said the current system of providing subsidised food items through the public distribution system (PDS) should be dismantled as it was plagued by leakages at different levels. It...

All 10 fingerprints, an iris scan and a photograph of the person will be used for unique identification (uid) of individuals, the cabinet committee on uid decided on Tuesday, giving its in-principle clearance to guidelines for setting up the uid database. In a billion-plus population, a mix of biometric and photographic record is considered necessary to ensure fidelity of information collected in the project. With uid intended to help identify...

NREGA, the UPA’s flagship employment scheme for which the Government has spent over Rs. 90,000 crore, is facing complaints of fudging of attendance registers, prompting the Union Rural Development Ministry to constitute a Working Group to look into it. The Ministry has already set up six such panels to deal with different issues relating to implementation of the programme like planning and execution of works, transparency and accountability and timely payment...