-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government has rubbished media reports that performance of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme in the current fiscal year will suffer due to arrears of wages of over Rs 8000 crore in 2015-16. Stating that certain facts in the reports have been highlighted without appreciating the larger picture, the government has clarified that is committed to ensure flow of adequate resources to the programme...

-Business Standard Only 47 per cent of the people with PMJDY accounts have received their RuPay debit cards, while these have been issued to 85 per cent of the beneficiaries Last-mile connectivity pangs have hobbled the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojna (PMJDY) in several ways, according to a study by MicroSave for the finance ministry. The scheme has helped improve financial inclusion. But insufficient income for banking correspondents (BCs) and a deficiency in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government aims to transform India into a digitally empowered society through its Digital India programme but it may have a task at hand with a recent survey showing that only 18 per cent of those in the age group of 14-29 years in villages and 49 per cent in cities were able to operate a computer in 2014. Indicating the Herculean task awaiting the government,...

The budgetary support to interest subvention scheme has increased by almost 14 times between 2006-07 and 2016-17. However, the much-touted subsidised short-term credit scheme provides little help to the small and marginal farmers, apart from tenant farmers. According to the Committee on Medium-term Path on Financial Inclusion, which submitted its report in December 2015, the interest subvention scheme suffers from 3 types of defects: i. Subsidised credit may not be...

-The Indian Express Several questions have been raised about our estimates of the savings from the DBT scheme for cooking gas. But all parties accept that the programme reduced subsidised sales by 24 per cent. Direct cash transfers have the potential to improve the economic lives of the poor by transferring benefits to households quickly and directly. Achieving these benefits requires thoughtful design of schemes, and careful, rigorous analysis of ongoing...