-The Business Standard Since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government decided to put on hold the Aadhaar-based subsidy transfer for domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), questions have been raised about the future of one of Congress' most ambitious initiatives aimed at plugging leakages. Two months after the government move, a pioneering study by economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar showed leakages dropped 12 per cent when smart cards were...

-The Hindustan Times If the opinion polls are to be believed, the UPA is facing a rout in the coming Lok Sabha elections. One explanation, popular in the media, goes something like this: The UPA faces voter wrath because it destroyed growth. The economy has paid a price for bad governance and expensive welfare schemes. If you look at data for the last two years, this view will find some support....

-PTI He noted that India's performance in poverty reduction and public welfare schemes is now lower even than that of poor countries Vested interests of individuals and "lobbying" among political parties is acting as impediment in India's quest for poverty reduction, noted economist Jean Dreze has said. The economist said it was "ironical" that during the peak period of the country's development, the corresponding indexes for poverty reduction, nutrition and health status have...

-The Hindu The dropout rate remains troublingly high Private school enrolment continues to rise, but the already low levels of what children are learning in schools - both government and private - continue to fall, new data shows. The Hindu is reporting exclusively on the findings of the 2011-12 round of India Human Development Survey (IHDS), a representative national sample of 42,000 households, carried out by the National Council for Applied Economic Research...

-The Indian Express Public and private efforts must converge to battle it. With two decades of high economic growth, India should have been on its way to controlling tuberculosis. Yet it remains an urgent public health problem. With 1,000 Indians dying every day of TB, and with the highest number of TB patients in the world, India is undoubtedly the crucial battleground for TB control. The enhanced detection of drug-resistant TB has...