-The Business Standard   Study also says MGNREGA workers spent almost 21 minute less in collecting each payment made electronically compared with manual transfer Even as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has put on hold its ambitious unique identification (UID) code-linked cash transfer programme, a study by noted economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar shows that leakage of funds allocated for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)...

-The Guardian As IPCC report warns of climate impact on food security, researchers are looking at whether talking about food could break political deadlock on global warming Reframing climate change as a food issue as the world's leading scientists did this week could provide an opportunity to mobilise people, experts say. Academics and campaigners were already looking at food as a way to better connect with public on climate change when the Intergovernmental...

-PTI Washington: One third of the world may be at increased risk of drought by 2100 as warmer temperatures wring more moisture from the soil, a new study has warned. Increasing heat is expected to extend dry conditions to far more farmland and cities by the end of the century than changes in rainfall alone, researchers said. Much of concern about future drought under global warming has focused on rainfall projections, but higher...

-Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research Using the recent rounds of NSS data, this paper evaluates the performance and outreach of India's public distribution system (PDS) in the rural areas. The results suggest a significant improvement in the performance of PDS in terms of its outreach and offtake. States like Bihar and Jharkhand which were lagging behind earlier have shown a marked improvement. We find greater coverage and utilisation of the...

-Down to Earth 68th Round of National Sample Survey makes it amply clear that the wave of economic growth has not percolated down from the 0.003 per cent of population of ruling elite (as per Income Tax records, only 42,800 persons have taxable Income more than Rs 1 crore in India). 99.996 per cent population is spending between just Rs 25.90 and Rs 37.36 per capita per day (average MPCE) in...