-The Business Standard The government needs to be braver with cash transfers On October 20, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is scheduled to launch the first major step in integrating the Unique ID, or Aadhaar, with government welfare schemes. The event is supposed to take place in Dudu, a town in Jaipur district in Congress-ruled Rajasthan. The presence of Congress President Sonia Gandhi also seems to suggest that the United Progressive Alliance...

-Outlook Burakha (Tripura): Rampati Debbarma, a 71–year-old tribal woman of Burakha village in West Tripura district today pressed her finger on a Aadhar-enabled micro-ATM to get her old-age pension in cash. Rampati is not alone, but hundreds of old-age pensioners of this village today collected their pensions in the same way with the help of Aadhar-enabled payment system introduced here today. "Earlier I used to walk about 10 km from my village to...

-Live Mint Step is another sign of government intent to move towards direct transfer for all programmes The Union cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal that will eventually lead to the direct transfer of cash subsidies to farmers for fertilizer, two weeks after it put in place the architecture to enable such a transition. The step is another sign of the government’s intent to move towards a regime of direct transfer of cash...

-The Economic Times Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has taken charge of the UPA's initiatives to directly transfer welfare benefits and subsidies into individual beneficiaries' bank accounts - a system that would plug the rampant leakages of funds earmarked for the poor via schemes such as NREGA on which the government spends over 3,00,000 crore annually. A new ministerial co-ordination committee under the PM would now fast-track the architecture for cash transfers while...

UIDAI chief holds discussions with Kiran on project’s progress The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is hopeful of covering another 40 crore population under the Aadhar cards in the coming two years. UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani said the authority had taken steps to address the shortcomings like duplication and fake enrolments identified during the first phase and efforts were underway to develop Resident Database in all States. Mr. Nilekani told reporters after...