-Live Mint Attempt to broad-base direct benefits transfer plan may help shore up the Congress’s standing among rural population The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government plans to include its flagship rural job guarantee programme in the second phase of its ambitious direct benefits transfer (DBT) plan, under which beneficiaries of social welfare programmes will receive money directly in their Aadhaar-linked bank accounts. The attempt to broad-base the cash transfer plan before several...

-NDTV Jim Yong Kim, who took over as the president of the World Bank in July last year, is on his maiden visit to India. He speaks to NDTV's Vikram Chandra on his first impressions of the country, the development challenges that India is facing and how poverty levels can be brought down. Here are the highlights of what Mr. Kim said:     Significant that I went to Uttar Pradesh in my first...

Introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2011, the UPA government’s Food Security Bill is finally going to be discussed in the current (Budget) Session of Parliament. The proposed legislation is now slated to see many additional amendments from the government, following criticism from the States, NGOs and diverse stake-holders working on access to food and child health. Attempt here is to summarise in a Q & A format the...

-The Business Standard Team set up after movement began under Aruna roy, activist Baba Adhav 2 years ago demanding universal pension as a right for all A task force set up by the Government to look into reforms in pension for the unorganised sector has recommended universal pension for those below the poverty line, and a target of covering them in the next five years. It also recommended a slight increase in pensions...

-Deccan Herald Bangalore: The Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation has requested the employers to furnish the Aadhaar numbers of their existing PF subscribers to embed the information in the bank accounts of beneficiaries.   The schemes of the EPFO involving transfer of benefits to beneficiaries have been identified for implementation of Direct Cash Transfers from January 1, 2013. The Organisation has asked the employers to maintain the information in excel format till the...