-The Times of India Everyone agrees that India needs to deliver social protection to the aam admi; the forthcoming Food Security Bill is one such attempt. Everyone also agrees that the government service delivery pipelines are riddled with leakages and largescale corruption. Direct cash transfers have been proposed as a way to remedy this defective system. However, as could be expected, the debate has become polarised, with one side believing that cash...

-The Economic Times Nazia is 10 years old. But, according to a claim filed by Chhattisgarh-based Shaheed Hospital with the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY), she has delivered a baby after a caesarean operation. Mukul (name changed) is only 7. But Agarwal Hospital, Raipur, has made a claim for removing cataract from his eyes. A large number of similar implausible claims, being made by private hospitals enrolled to treat poor patients under...

-The Hindu Bangalore: Many persons with disabilities are jobless and unable to get or denied their paltry pension Seven-year-old Sadiya lies awake as her parents and siblings, who have just returned from an overnight trip to a dargah, catch up on their sleep. Lying on her back, no taller than an average toddler, she wails when she spots strangers at her door. Sadiya shares the tin-roofed 10 ft by 10 ft space...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court’s unyielding criticism of the government for not eradicating the practice of manual scavenging was the springboard for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to introduce the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012 in the Lok Sabha on September 3. Welcomed as a panacea for the historically iniquitous, caste-ordained practice of manually handling human waste, the new Bill indicates renewed commitment...

-Frontline Members of denotified, nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes, treated as criminal tribes by the colonial rulers, have no place to call their own and no land, no rights, and no support from the government.  Emaciated, eyes sunken deep into sockets, skin hanging loose, almost gasping for breath, Indro Devi and Sarvnath, a couple in their eighties, lie on polythene sheets in an 8×10 square-foot tent made of rags, by a stinking nullah...