Bid to add social content to UID scheme, otherwise in limbo   With the AADHAR scheme apparently in limbo, the Centre is making a desperate effort to provide it social content. As of now, only 3.5 crore unique identification cards have been issued as against an enrolment of 10 crore people across the country. Matters turned worse when the Reserve Bank of India issued a directive that bank accounts could not be opened on...

-The Times of India   The Rs 32 per capita urban poverty line is a measure only of extreme poverty, not of acceptable consumption-linked daily expenditure. Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh have clarified this. They've also stated that prevailing BPL figures won't determine selection of the beneficiaries of social schemes. This hopefully will put an end to the high-decibel protests of opposition parties and...

-The Hindu   The controversy over who in India is ‘poor’ enough to receive state support has been partially laid to rest. A joint statement by the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and the Minister for Rural Development has declared that data collected by the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), 2011 will be the basis for identifying those deemed eligible for entitlements under various central government programmes. India’s official poverty estimates based...

-The Economic Times   Pressure from within and outside the government has forced Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to clarify that the Tendulkar Commission's poverty line was, "not meant to be an acceptable level of living for the aam aadmi." Ahluwalia said a new methodology will be worked out to determine entitlements of beneficiaries under various schemes for poor. A Socio-Economic and Caste-Economic census was also underway to survey all rural...

-The Hindu   More than 11.02 lakh households given works Tamil Nadu topped the list of States that provided jobs to rural households for 100 days as per the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) at the end of the second quarter of the financial year 2011-12. More than 11.02 lakh households benefited from the scheme in Tamil Nadu. Statistics Andhra Pradesh came second by providing jobs to 9.65 lakh households and Uttar Pradesh...