-Business Today Social sector spending and investments in infrastructure development could be the highlights of the forthcoming Union Budget 2018-19, credit rating agency ICRA forecasts. It expects increase in budgetary allocations for social infrastructure and social security spending, such as NREGA (rural job security), food subsidy (food security), insurance schemes and welfare Pensions. Larger allocations for infrastructure related to cold chains, etc., considered to boost the agricultural sector and the rural...

-The Hindu Business Line Will help strengthen existing channels of distribution, says Finance Ministry New Delhi: The Centre’s social security scheme for the aged — the Atal Pension Yojana (APY) — will now also be available at small finance and payments banks, the Finance Ministry said on Friday. “To strengthen the existing channels of APY distribution, it is felt that these new payments banks and small finance banks will provide a boost to...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must universalise social security Pensions for the elderly, single women and persons with disabilities and also operationalise the maternity entitlement scheme at the earliest, says Reetika Khera, Associate Professor of Economics at IIT-Delhi. In an interview to BusinessLine, Khera argued against the use of Aadhaar for authentication of beneficiaries and said it has “no role in plugging leakages or in the identification of correct beneficiaries”....

-The Telegraph Ranchi: An elderly woman, who was allegedly denied ration for three months because of Aadhaar data mismatch, starved to death on December 25, a report released by the Right to Food Campaign said on Tuesday. Etwaria Devi (67), a resident of Sonpurwa village in Majhiaon block of Garhwa, 225km from the state capital, was purportedly the fifth victim of hunger in the state last year although the glaring cause of...

-Press note from Right to Food Campaign, Jharkhand   Etwariya Devi, a 67-year-old widow, died of hunger and exhaustion on 25 December in Sonpurwa village of Majhiaon block of Garhwa district (Jharkhand). She lived with her son Ghura Vishwakarma, daughter-in-law Usha Devi and their three children in a dilapidated kutcha house. The family has a hand-to-mouth existence and is routinely unable to access adequate nutrition. Surviving the day on only a meal...