-The Telegraph The Centre is poised to launch a pilot project to study the delivery of food subsidy through direct cash transfer, a proposed system that civil society groups feel will end up inconveniencing the poor beneficiaries. The food and consumer affairs ministry will start the pilot scheme in the six Union territories next month, a top government source told The Telegraph. Now, households buy food grains at subsidised rates (called the “central...

-The Business Standard Reetika Khera Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi* “aadhaar is being made de facto compulsory for welfare schemes. With two-thirds without aadhaar, they are bound to be denied entitlements” There are three components of the government’s direct benefit transfer scheme — computerisation, extending banking services and linking the benefits with aadhaar. The real game-changers are the first two, whereas aadhaar-enabled transfers carry the risk of excluding current beneficiaries. The Central government has...

-The Times of India JAIPUR: Direct cash transfer scheme that was rolled out from January 1 this year in three pilot districts of Rajasthan is facing crippling absence of banking infrastructure and at this point it's anybody's guess when the banks can do their part to provide legs to the UPA-II's ambitious project. One of the pillar's of the project was to have banking correspondents (BCs) in the unbanked villages so that...

-The Hindu Subsidies on cooking gas, kerosene and diesel have resulted in perverse outcomes not envisaged when they were introduced With the aadhaar-based direct cash transfer scheme facing so many glitches in implementation, any hopes that the country’s energy sector can soon dismount the subsidy tiger it has been riding so dangerously have receded into the background. Had the aadhaar scheme worked satisfactorily, the next logical step would have been to extend...

-The Times of India National Advisory Council (NAC) member and MKSS leader Aruna Roy on Friday shot off a scathing letter to the finance ministry objecting to "talk" of subsidy cuts for the poor while funding programmes like Aadhar that have no legislative backing. She also suggested that pre-budget consultations for business and social sector should be held jointly in a more democratic fashion. Expressing "shock" at subsidy cuts Roy, who did...