-Hindustan Times The government should pay 25% of wages of MGNREGA workers employed in individual farms and the poor should get an option to choose between money or subsidised food grains under the public distribution system (PDS). These are a few suggestions to be made by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog in the occasional paper that will be discussed with the states for framing a national policy to eliminate...

-Press Release from Delhi Pension Parishad Activists from seven major campaigns stated unequivocally that the Union Budget for 2016-17 far from ‘Transforming India’, as claimed by the Finance Minister, Shri Arun Jaitley, is neglecting the interests of farmers, the poor and vulnerable both in nominal and real terms and subjecting every life-affirming program to severe  budget cuts. Activists from seven major campaigns such as the Right to Food Campaign , the...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: It’s quite possible that in this Parliament session, India will make the transition from being a wasteful welfare state to a reformed economy that allocates scarce resources efficiently. The Modi government on Thursday introduced the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. When signed into law, the bill will make Aadhaar -- the unique biometric identification number -- central to all social...

-Livemint.com The move to introduce a law to bring statutory backing for Aadhaar will clear decks for Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and Mobile number aimed at expanding access to financial services New Delhi: Statutory backing for the Aadhaar unique identification scheme will be introduced during the financial year 2016-17, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Monday in his budget speech. The bill will be introduced in the current budget session. The government’s...

-FirstPost.com Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes, in vogue for some time in India now, have surfaced with renewed fervour over the last year and a half. DBT, as the term suggests, is a strategy aimed to electronically transfer price subsidies and benefits provided under various welfare schemes as cash directly into the bank accounts of beneficiaries. The Economic Survey 2014-15 made a strong case for replacing various price subsidies and in-kind transfers...