-Hindustan Times Under DBT system, beneficiaries are required to collect food subsidy in cash from their bank and then buy food grain from local ration shops at market price Septuagenarian Deventi Devi visited her bank, 6km from her village, thrice this month to withdraw her food subsidy credited by the government in her account under the Centre’s direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme. She returned empty-handed each time because the bank said the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Fast depleting ground water in nearly 30% of the assessed blocks in the country has pushed the Centre to fast-track its Rs 6,000 crore ambitious plan aimed at efficient management of available water resources and strengthening of recharge mechanism through community participation. Half of the total cost of this central scheme, named Atal Bhujal Yojana, will be supported by the World Bank as loan while the...

-The Indian Express In the Union Budget 2018-19, an initial corpus of Rs 2,000 crore was provided for the NHPS that aims to provide medical cover of Rs 5 lakh to over 10 crore poor and vulnerable families. New Delhi: TO decide the specifics of the proposed National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), the Centre has decided to call a meeting of state health secretaries shortly. Details of the scheme’s implementation — touted...

-The Economic Times blog Word has it that World Bank economists use “obviously fabricated” data from time to time. These are not Sitaram Yechury or Medha Patkar’s words, but those of Paul Romer, former chief economist of the World Bank, in a recent email exchange reported by Financial Times. Romer retracted them later, but this “may not end the controversy”, as The Economist mildly put it. This is not the first time...

-TheWire.in The Modi government’s attempts to reshape the economy lie entirely in the financial realm; they come on the back of concerted efforts to strip workers of legal protection in not just the informal sector, but also the formal. The Narendra Modi government has made two major interventions in the economic sphere, demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), with the ostensible aim of expanding the formal sector at the expense...