-The Telegraph The government has not institutionalized SAUs which are at times intimidated when it comes to accessing data on various programmes The auditing agility of government programmes seems to have gained strength. After the recent floods in Assam, the state planned to carry out a social audit of relief measures to look into corruption and bribery. This is the first time that any government is trying to reinforce a social audit...

-The Telegraph Survey by Indian School of Business in Jharkhand reveals mass deletion of genuine job cards during linkage India’s economy is going through an unprecedented crisis of unemployment. In these times, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme and other welfare programmes are beacons of hope for India’s large rural population. However, the delivery of welfare has traditionally suffered from Leakages. Thus, in 2015-16, the Government of India started linking...

-The Telegraph The economic distress caused by unilaterally imposed lockdowns has brought the focus back on the rural job programme Narendra Modi’s cocky statement in Parliament in 2015 about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act being a monumental failure of the Congress regime may have been a political jibe, but it showed that the government had no intention of boosting a programme which, since its inception, has suffered from the...

-The Indian Express In Jharkhand and Bihar, the food crisis triggered by the lockdown has put a spotlight on an old problem — Leakages and corruption in the the Public Distribution System. Patna, Ranchi: Earlier this week, Jharkhand’s grievance helpline 181 received four calls from Palamu on a single day. All the callers had a similar complaint: though the state had promised 70 kg rice in April, their ration dealer in Medininagar...

-Down to Earth Poor, elderly not able to match fingerprints on system, not getting food grain as a result Thousands of poor villagers have been pushed to the brink of starvation in Bihar as the biometric system installed to curb Leakages in the public distribution system (PDS) is proving to be the stumbling block on their way. The Food and Consumer Protection Department in the state has made it mandatory for use of...