-The Hindu Business Line NEW DELHI: The Centre will meet representatives of the Indian Pulses and Grains Association (IPGA) every month to take stock of retail prices of pulses that still rule high, as well as supply issues. This was decided at a meeting between Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and IGPA members here on Thursday evening. The meeting comes soon after the Centre’s decision to enhance the buffer stock limit of...

-The Indian Express The Rajasthan government has said the state’s record has been exemplary in making the transition from the older ration card-based system to using Aadhaar. Jaipur: Food security activists and economists have expressed concern at the exclusion of thousands of PDS beneficiaries in Rajasthan owing to glitches in the Aadhaar enabled electronic Point of Sale (ePoS) device. The Aadhaar enabled ePoS is dealing a double blow to the state’s public distribution...

-Business Standard Fingerprint failure reports of existing Aadhaar-linked PDS cases not revealed The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has decided to complete the linking the bank accounts to Aadhaar numbers of all the beneficiaries of large social schemes, including the National Food Security Act, by March 2017. Once done, the delivery of these schemes would be based on biometric authentication linked to Aadhaar or direct cash transfers to linked bank accounts of...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Women outnumber men in increasing proportions in India’s rural job scheme, a trend experts call the “feminisation” of the programme. With changes in the labour environment — more men migrating for better wages — more women are working as labourers for additional household income. The scheme, launched in 2006, had less than 20% women in its workforce in the initial years but after a decade, 56% of jobs...

-The Indian Express PDS has improved in the state, but it’s still not up to the mark. Recent media reports suggest that the public distribution system (PDS) in West Bengal is now “doing enormously well” — as one headline put it. Some also claim that this has contributed to the victory of the Trinamool Congress in the latest assembly elections. Since we were involved in the survey cited in these reports, we...