-PTI New Delhi: The Government has eliminated 1.6 crore duplicate and bogus ration cards that will help save about Rs 10,000 crore in subsidy bill annually, said Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa. In addition, the Government has saved Rs 14,872 crore by offering subsidy on cooking gas (LPG) directly to consumers and direct benefit transfer is planned to be extended to 150 schemes by the end of this year, he told PTI here. DBT...
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Flaws in many rural development plans -Sanjeeb Mukherjee
-Business Standard Official panel points to bid deficiencies in rural job guarantee, Pensions, housing and other programmes Wage payment delays are a distressing feature of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), an official panel says. This has to be adequately addressed, by the Centre and states, to keep the programme’s spirit alive, it has said. It and some other findings of concern are the result of a multi-state Common Review...
More »Nikhil Dey of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) speaks to Civil Society
-CivilSocietyOnline.com For the past decade state governments have launched a series of Internet-based initiatives to deliver services more efficiently. Technology has been seen as the best way of bypassing red tape and corruption in the system to reach the poor directly with benefits. Beneficiaries are identified through biometrics and a series of tech solutions like smart cards, micro ATMs and so on. The result of these efforts is that India is...
More »Census pegs female-headed households at 13.2%, but it may be underestimation
There is a general perception that men are the primary breadwinners and, therefore, they are the ones responsible for fending for their families. However, recently released data from the population Census 2011 shows that around 3.3 crore households in the country are headed by women. In other words, overall there are 13.2 percent female-headed households (See Chart 1). The Census data shows that there are 59.4 lakh single member female-headed...
More »Job growth at a snail’s pace -Santosh Mehrotra
-The Hindu For jobs to grow, consumer demand has to improve consistently. This can only happen with an industrial policy, which India has not had since 1991 There will be no demographic dividend without growth in industrial and service sector jobs. The underlying logic behind a dividend is that as jobs grow, incomes rise and so do savings. Based on higher savings, the investment rate to GDP grows, resulting in faster GDP...
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