-Business Standard New schemes allows consumers without Aadhaar to receive cash directly in their bank accounts The government is to launch the modified version of the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme (DBT) for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) in 54 districts across the country from tomorrow. The government hopes to cut down on large scale diversion of subsidised domestic cooking gas that does not make Aadhaar number mandatory. Earlier version of the scheme that was rolled...

-IANS Bhubaneswar: The government Wednesday decided to register construction workers from Odisha employed outside the state and provide them with all the benefits available to construction workers within the state. This was decided at a meeting chaired by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik here, said official sources. The meeting decided to extend housing loans subject to a maximum of Rs.one lakh at an interest rate of two percent to the construction workers. The...

-The Indian Express Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala): Infant deaths are still stalking tribal hamlets in Kerala's Attappadi region, where the community's population has been falling alarmingly due to various factors. The recurring incidents of infant deaths have cast a shadow over the survival of tribals in Attappadi. A study had found that tribals formed 90 per cent of population in Attappadi in 1951, but the same was down to 42 per cent in...

-The Economic Times For one who had worked so closely to frame the world's largest job guarantee programme, known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, it's not easy to see it succumb to pressure. It's no wonder that economist-cum-activist Jean Dreze will raise his voice against this, along with eminent academics such as Pranab Bardhan and Maitreesh Ghatak. Dreze says corruption related to NREGA and leakages - its...

-The Times of India Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, hereafter BP, have argued for phasing out the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in favour of cash transfers ("Rural Inefficiency Act", ToI, 23 October). It's surprising-and amusing-that two eminent economists have chosen to make a case based on prior beliefs and some sophomoric wordplay ('mis'leading economists), rather than on the available evidence. A survey by one of us of the empirical literature...