-The Telegraph Kolkata: The state government today set February 28 as the deadline for distributing Aadhaar cards among all Bengal residents, prompting many to wonder about the feasibility of covering over six crore people in little over five-and-a-half months. Providing Aadhaar numbers to all citizens above the age of five is the precursor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's dream project of rolling out a direct benefit-transfer scheme, replacing the leak-prone subsidy system. The...

-Reuters Tobacco inflicts huge damage on the health of India's people and could be clocking up a death toll of 1.5 million a year by 2020 if more users are not persuaded to kick the habit, an international report said on Thursday. Despite having signed up to a global treaty on tobacco control and having numerous anti-tobacco and smoke-free laws, India is failing to implement them effectively, leaving its people vulnerable to...

-Outlook Kochi: Around 25,000 gram panchayats across India will be networked by 2014 end as part of the National Optical Fibre Network programme in the first such scheme to connect so many people, Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal said here today. "This project would be the first of its kind in the world launched by any government connecting such a large population," he said after inaugurating 'Vidya Jyothi,' an initiative of...

-The Telegraph Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government today announced a scheme to allow big private investors to directly procure farm produce - a segment that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee could not liberate from the stranglehold of the Forward Bloc. The scheme titled Brihat Krishak Bazar Yojana, which loosely translates into mega farmer market programme, seeks to "connect the local market to high-growth demand centres" and weed out middlemen. The project will allow private developers to...

-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...