-Deccan Herald The very first announcement made by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on taking charge as the new CM is that the unit system under the Public Distribution System (PDS) would be scrapped and 30kg of rice at Re 1/kg would be given to each Below Poverty Line (BPL) household, irrespective of the size of the family. This is estimated to cost Rs 2,373 crore a year, almost double the estimated Rs 1,200...

-The Business Standard Govt should streamline its free medicines plan The Centre is reportedly going to shelve a plan to procure generic drugs for free supply to patients throughout the country. This is a serious error. Reportedly, states will instead be asked to do so; but, if a perceived inability to procure, stock and distribute these drugs is the reason for backtracking on the plan, how precisely will states be free of...

Argumentative Indians are at it again! After sparring over the poverty line and the actual number of poor, India's renowned economists have fired up a fresh debate over the extent of malnutrition. In the earlier debate, the Planning Commission ‘reduced' poverty on paper disregarding NSSO and official committees, including the NCEUS, which determined that 77% Indians survived on less than Rs 20 a day. Columbia university economist Arvind Panagariya has...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: While declaring that her government was keen to take the Aadhaar-based cash transfers to 30 lakh beneficiaries across various schemes, chief minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday expressed concern over obstacles in the delivery of cash transfers due to non-cooperation of banks. She urged Unique Identification Authority of India chairman Nandan Nilekani to work towards speeding up the bank account opening process linked to Aadhaar enrolments. Dikshit...

-The Times of India New Delhi: It's easy to locate Triveni's home in the narrow lanes of the slum colony of Sundar Nagri. "Kaun? Woh RTI-wali ?" says a youngster who offers to lead us through a maze of gullies flanked by open drains till we reach a house that sits cheek-by-jowl with other similar haphazardly built structures. Its occupant, though, is a picture of quiet resilience. In 2002, Triveni became the...