-The Economic Times Imagine a rural family of five. Mom. Dad. Two kids. And Grandma. Assume too that they are below the poverty line. The day is coming when this family will have to give its biometrics out to myriad agencies.  You know that Nandan Nilekani's Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or the Registrar General's National Population Register (NPR) has been collecting biometrics for a while now.  But a set of other...

Plans are afoot to cap the number of subsidised LPG cylinders at six to eight per annum to reduce the losses of state-run oil firms and bring down the burgeoning subsidy bill. Oil ministry officials said consumers might have to pay more for every additional cylinder, and the amount would be gradually linked to market rates. Sources said the finance ministry had asked the oil ministry to revisit its proposal made last...

No place to store seven million tonnes of procured foodgrains As the monsoons advance, the food ministry is desperately looking for shelters. On June 21, KV Thomas, the Union food minister, admitted what many feared the past two months. Nearly seven million tonnes of foodgrains procured by the government in the current season may perish due to non-availability of storage space. This is 50 per cent more than Uttar Pradesh's total...

Several studies in India have shown that more than 40 per cent of foodgrain meant for the poor is pilfered on the way. In order to ensure that food reaches the needy and the hungry across the country, the government has launched a series of steps to streamline the public distribution system (PDS). Among several initiatives being planned, especially in the light of the National Food Security Act under preparation, a...

-Live Mint Latest houselisting data demonstrates a visible growth in the material well-being of the two groups Indians, all of them, across class and caste, traded up over the past decade, a period of rapid and record economic growth—that’s the counter-intuitive message in the latest update to Census 2011. According to the so-called houselisting data released by the census, scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) have, like the rest of the country,...