-The Hindu Subsidies on cooking gas, kerosene and diesel have resulted in perverse outcomes not envisaged when they were introduced With the Aadhaar-based direct cash transfer scheme facing so many glitches in implementation, any hopes that the country’s energy sector can soon dismount the subsidy tiger it has been riding so dangerously have receded into the background. Had the Aadhaar scheme worked satisfactorily, the next logical step would have been to extend...

-Huffington Post As we start 2013, many people will be thinking about plans and promises to improve their diets and health. We think a broader collection of farmers, policy-makers, and eaters need new, bigger resolutions for fixing the food system -- real changes with long-term impacts in fields, boardrooms, and on plates all over the world. These are resolutions that the world can't afford to break with nearly one billion still...

-Frontline Maharashtra’s sugarcane farmers are a worried lot as the State government backs out from the sugar pricing process.  Sangli & Kolhapur: KOLHAPUR and Sangli districts in Maharashtra form the heartland of Indian sugar industry. This time of year is generally the busiest, with itinerant labourers cutting sugarcane and loading it on to tractors that roar off to the more than 20 sugar factories in the two districts. In November and December,...

-The Hindu Activists question change of policy for rehabilitation; want cut-off date of March 2007 adhered to strictly Holding the Delhi Government squarely responsible for following a policy of large-scale displacement of slum dwellers without adequate norms for providing rehabilitation to all of them, activists working for the rights of slum dwellers have demanded that the cut-off date of March 31, 2007, be followed strictly to ensure that no one is discriminated...

-The Business Standard UID can shift focus from the government's functioning to the intended beneficiaries and ease of access The central government is seriously thinking of putting in place a technology-based platform to hand over subsidies directly into the hands of their intended beneficiaries. A number of pilots are under way for handing over, for example, kerosene subsidies for household consumption. While this is largely a central government initiative, state governments...