The promotion of the PDS as an Aadhaar application would fundamentally alter its form and character. NO scheme of the Indian government would be transformed more fundamentally by Aadhaar than the public distribution system (PDS). The nature of this transformation appears to be taking the form of a virtual dismantling of the PDS; even if a skeletal fair price shop (FPS, or ration shop) system continues to exist, it is likely...
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Deadlock over sugarcane price continues
-The Telegraph Sharad Pawar’s hometown Baramati was shut down today by farmers demanding higher remunerative prices for sugarcane. The protest by the farmers has sent a strong political message to the ruling Congress-NCP government. Baramati is the seat of Maharashtra’s powerful and influential sugar belt that controls the state politics. Shops and establishments were closed down as hundreds of sugarcane farmers camping here for the fourth consecutive day intensified their protest and organised rasta...
More »India's official poverty line doesn't measure up by Jayati Ghosh
It is time to separate people's real needs from the arbitrary assessments of poverty that have guided Indian governments India's poverty line has always been a matter of huge debate, but it was a discussion mostly confined to economists and policymakers. But the matter has now gone public, following a row about an affidavit from the planning commission to the supreme court of India, in which the official poverty line was...
More »Centre reducing States to glorified municipal corporations: Jayalalithaa
-The Hindu Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Saturday criticised the Central government for seeking to reduce States into the status of “glorified municipal corporations.” In her address to the National Development Council, which met in New Delhi, the Chief Minister, whose speech was read out by Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam in absentia, said that the NDC was a forum to consult with State Chief Ministers, as equal partners in the process...
More »Much More Needed to Help the Poor by Jayati Ghosh
Today is the ''International Day for the Eradication of Poverty'', so it an appropriate day to note how necessary it still is to emphasise this concern among Indian policy makers. Sadly, lack of official awareness is evident in all sorts of recent policy measures, for example in the cynicism of increasing oil prices that feed into all other prices with cascading effects, even when inflation has already imposed huge burdens on...
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