-The Hindu The Andhra Pradesh Assembly did itself proud by passing a Bill aimed at bringing the State’s disadvantaged sections on a par with the rest of society in economic, educational and human development terms in the next 10 years. The Andhra Pradesh Assembly did itself proud by passing a Bill aimed at bringing the State’s disadvantaged sections on a par with the rest of society in economic, educational and human development...

-The Indian Express The UPA’s cash transfer scheme — delivering over Rs.3.2 lakh crore in subsidies and welfare programmes to the poor, directly to their bank accounts — has raised fears in many quarters about the capacity of a rickety state apparatus to cope with messy implementation issues. Our collective self-confidence about being able to implement any new policy is so low today, we seem to be paralysed by the mere...

-Outlook Its ploy of Aadhar-hinged cash transfer may have won the Congress political points, but will it really be a game-changer?   State-Wise     40% of the 22 crore Aadhar numbers are in Andhra Pradesh (4.7 crore) and Maharashtra (4 crore)     20% is what the two politically sensitive, Congress-ruled states account for of the 51 districts where DCT will be rolled out     55 lakh Aadhar numbers in TMC-run West Bengal. BJP-ruled Gujarat (57...

-The Financial Express The massive scale and complexity of major subsidy schemes are likely to delay the ambitious plan of limiting state subsidy on food, fertiliser and petroleum products only to the poor by directly transferring cash to their bank accounts using a unique identity number (Aadhaar). While other cash payments like pension, scholarship, wage under rural job guarantee scheme can be transferred directly to the beneficiary’s bank account, it is difficult...

-The Hindu Any political benefit the Congress hopes to reap in 2014 will come at the cost of reducing the effectiveness of Social Welfare schemes In getting its ministers to endorse the shift to cash transfers from the AICC office in New Delhi, the Congress has highlighted the political nature of the move. The party clearly expects cash transfers to play the same role for it in 2014 that the National Rural...