-Press Information Bureau The India Rural Development Report 2012/13 was released here by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, Government of India. The Report was prepared by IDFC Foundation in collaboration with network partners, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), the Institute for Rural Management Anand (IRMA), and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), with contributions from several other researchers, experts and civil society organisations. On...

-The Hindu Aadhaar is mandatory for 28 welfare schemes in three districts The Supreme Court decree that ruled out making an Aadhaar number mandatory for delivery of government services, puts a spoke in the wheel of several ambitious plans announced by several departments of the State government to link crucial services to Aadhaar. These plans range from Direct Benefit Transfer scheme for kerosene and LPG subsidies to using the number to weed out...

Bihar Government's programme of distributing bicycles to school girls may be a modest intervention but is leading to big changes. A new research-based paper, brought out in August 2013, corroborates the success of the programme and testifies that it is leading to improved school enrollment of girls and arresting their dropout rates (See links below to read full paper and earlier studies on the subject).   Based on econometric and statistical models,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) was supposed to be a game-changer ahead of the 2014 general elections, with the government planning to plug leakages by transferring cash directly into the accounts of beneficiaries and hoping to cash in on their goodwill. But eight months down the line, it is discovering that the grand plan has run into bureaucratic walls and the beneficiaries are not ready to...

-The Financial Express Food Security Bill will raise the subsidy burden by 18%. The debate should be about the rise in costs of households due to leakages in PDS and price hike of other nutritious food items, and how these costs can be minimised by DBT In a recent article, Surjit Bhalla ("Manmonia's FSB: 3% of GDP", July 6, Financial Express-http://goo.gl/qoIbd3) has asserted that the Food Security Bill will cost 3% of...