The Smart Card Project is helping nearly 12.7 million poor people in Andhra Pradesh to get timely payment of wages It was conceived as a vehicle to promote financial inclusion by taking banking services to the unbanked poor, harnessing information and communications technology to ensure the benefits of public welfare programmes reach those they are intended for by plugging leakages. The Andhra Pradesh Smart Card Project, launched in 2007, is...

Although India is a labour-surplus economy – with an unlimited number of workers willing to work at a subsistence wage – a paradoxical feature of the labour market is the rising incidence of scarcity or shortages amid a situation of potential plenty. No doubt, this pertains to skilled labour. But when 15 per cent of Indian trucks are idle owing to a shortage of drivers or India Inc is worried...

Vilas Bhagwan Pote grins as he recalls his election as sarpanch of Ralegan Siddhi, Anna Hazare’s village in Ahmednagar district, 11 years ago. “I was the traitor, the bad guy,” he jokes. “I openly defied Anna because I felt he was wrong.” Pote, a Dalit charmakar (cobbler) then in his 30s, had been unhappy as the 2000 panchayat polls drew close. As always, Anna had nominated a new executive body for the...

Only in India does redistribution, which keeps the poor and marginalised out of the mainstream of the economy, pass for inclusive growth. In much of the rest of the world, inclusive growth would mean giving the poor and marginalised a direct stake in the economy with fast-growing industries and services absorbing them into gainful employment and, thus, making them true participants and partners in the growth process.  But in India, we...

Used to getting jobs done through contracts, government department assigned budgets under rural employment guarantee schemes have failed to use earmarked funds, while job card holders in the countryside are making the best of what is available. Government documents showed that of the Rs 880 crore funds available under MNREGA for Himachal in 2010-11, ten line government departments under the flagship programme had spent only Rs 15.57 crore till September. Besides a...