-The Hindu Business Line   Over 56 per cent of Indian farmers are not aware about the maximum retail prices (MRP) of fertilisers they buy, while 45 per cent fork out more than the MRP and 59 per cent face problems in getting their season's full requirement in time. These are the startling findings of a countrywide survey of 5,498 farmers conducted by field audit teams of the Comptroller and Auditor General...

Proposes centralised PDS network, model PDS software for transparency. As the government works out the modalities for implementing direct transfer of subsidies on cooking gas, fertilisers and kerosene, a task force headed by Nandan Nilekani has proposed a three-stage model for direct transfer of food subsidy. The rollout of direct transfer of food subsidy will be contingent on a modern and computerised public distribution system (PDS), for which Nilekani has suggested a...

In his fields, Badhia Naval Singh , a farmer tilling 8 bighas of land in the Bagli tehsil in Madhya Pradesh, has been seeing something strange for a while now. Earlier, if he pulled out a tuft of grass, he would see earthworms . "Ab woh dikhna bandh ho gaye hain (they don't show up any longer)," says the 45-yearold . Also, he says, when he ploughed earlier, the soil...

Cash transfers are now suggested by many as a silver bullet for addressing the problems that plague India’s anti-poverty programmes. This article argues instead for evidence-based policy and informed public debate to clarify the place, prospects and problems of cash transfers in India. By drawing on key empirical findings from academic and grey literature across the world an attempt is made to draw attention to three aspects of cash transfers...

-PTI   Delhi may soon become the first city in the country to give cash instead of subsidized kerosene to BPL families, a move aimed at controlling widespread pilferage of the fuel. As per the proposal put forth by chief minister Sheila Dikshit, cash equivalent of the monthly kerosene subsidy will be directly transferred to the bank account of the female head of the family. A BPL family is likely to...