-Economic and Political Weekly This is not "big data" to be used to cut down welfare expenditure. It was the Ministry of Rural Development which, for close to five years beginning in 2010, designed, planned and oversaw the execution of the 2011 Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC), whose first batch of results were released earlier this month. Yet, it was somewhat unusual to see Union Minister for Finance, Arun Jaitley, rather...

-Livemint.com World Bank study says giving cash is a more efficient way to ensure social security Last week the government’s chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian described the direct benefit transfer scheme as a “game changer”. The Pahal scheme, under which cooking gas consumers receive subsidy in their bank accounts, is one of the ways the government is trying to improve the efficiency of its welfare programmes using the so-called the JAM...

The nation can be proud of running some of the world's largest programmes on social safety nets, says the latest report by World Bank. However, public spending on safety nets is still low in comparison to neighbouring countries Bangladesh and Pakistan. India tops the list of 136 countries for running the world's largest school feeding programme i.e. the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS), and also the biggest public works programme i.e....

-The Indian Express Push for cash transfers tacitly asks citizens to fend for themselves The implementation of cash transfers by a state would necessarily entail: one, the identification of beneficiaries on the basis of predefined eligibility parameters; and two, calculating the exact amount of money, equivalent to the monetary value of the subsidy that beneficiaries were supposed to get, and transferring it into their bank accounts — with the intention that they...

-PTI WASHINGTON: India's rural employment guarantee programme MNREGA has been ranked as the world's largest public works programme, providing social security net to almost 15 per cent of the country's population, World Bank has said. India is among the five middle-income countries running the world's largest social safety net programmes, said a World Bank Group's report 'The State of Social Safety Nets 2015'. "The world's five largest social safety net programmes are all...