The late Rajiv Gandhi famously, or infamously, once claimed that only 15 per cent of the funds allocated to welfare programmes ever reached the intended Beneficiaries. The rest leaked enroute, entering the pockets of an assortment of intermediaries. This is a thought that the Union finance minister must always remember, especially when he sits down to allocate funds for an assortment of subsidies and some of the high-profile spending programme...

Work on India's sixth economic census will begin in 2012 as the government wants to give preference to enumeration of those living below the poverty line and a caste census. The economic census, which provides basic data on the number of enterprises and people employed in them, was originally planned to begin this month. "We are now looking to start fieldwork on economic census by February 2012," a senior official with...

With Assembly elections just about a year away, the Mayawati government seems to have realised the importance of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. On Thursday, hundreds of government officers fanned out in around 30 districts of the state for holding special camps to issue jobs card to the poor who have been left out in the past. The holding of camps is part of the campaign which was launched on...

As the murder of Malegaon additional collector Yashwant Sonawane, allegedly by the oil mafia, once again highlights the illegal diversion of public distribution system (PDS) kerosene to the open market and industrial units, Punjab seems to have found its answer in Nandan Nilekani’s UID scheme, Adhaar. This March, as the state begins an enrollment drive to give its estimated 2.8 crore population a unique 12-digit identity, the number will also provide...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Wednesday said workers employed under the government's flagship rural jobs scheme, Mahatma Gandhi NREGA, would get higher wages to offset inflation. "We have decided to hike the wages as per the rise in consumer price index. This will raise the wages by 17 to 30 percent," Manmohan Singh said at a function to mark the fifth anniversary of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The gathering...