-Down to Earth NDA-ruled Centre tells Uttarakhand to computerise Public Distribution System first; Congress-ruled state cries foul The Central government has told Uttarakhand government that allocation of food grains to it under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) will be considered only on successful completion of computerisation of the state's public distribution system (PDS) and satisfactory arrangements for delivery of food grains at the doorsteps of beneficiaries. The letter dated August 4, a...

-Live Mint The return on cows and buffaloes, like that of many stocks traded on Wall Street, is positive in some years and negative in others This is one piece of news that would please Dinanath Batra and his cow-loving fans: Recent research by a team of economists show that rural Indians investing in cows and buffaloes may be acting quite Rationally, overturning earlier research by another set of economists which showed...

-The Financial Express For all its targeting, fake Ration cards abound. The GPS tracking of trucks carrying Ration shop grain and the SMS alerts were supposed to be unique ways in which the Chhattisgarh government had resolved the issue of pilferage of Ration shop foodgrains. Once people were informed that the Rations had left the FCI godowns and when they reached their Ration shops, there was less scope for pilferage. Hardly surprising...

-The Indian Express A headlong rush into PPPs will only leave a trail of disputes, renegotiations, corruption. The conventional wisdom in India on public-private partnerships (PPPs) is that they help governments raise capital to meet large infrastructure investment targets. But this Rationale for promoting PPPs does not stand on strong foundations. There are three potential reasons for supporting PPPs. First, they enable governments to access more capital without visibly breaching fiscal targets. In...

-The Deccan Herald The poverty line continues to be a conundrum. The fixing of the poverty line at Rs 47 for urban areas and Rs. 32 in rural areas per capita per day by the latest Rangarajan committee report, based on a person or family's spending per day (called ‘consumption expenditure') has again drawn vociferous criticism. All these years, this all important line has not been fixed in a Rational manner, rendering...