-Livemint.com Kerala govt’s aim is to build 500 sq. ft houses costing Rs4 lakh each, for which the state has tweaked the centre’s housing programme, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Bengaluru: Building free houses for all the homeless in Kerala -- more than half-a-million at last count -- is one of the flagship projects of the Communist government. A cabinet meeting held on Tuesday night offers glimpses into the project’s nitty-gritty. The aim...

-The Pioneer Ranchi: A large number of ration card holders from Nagri and activists of Right to Food Campaign, led by noted socio-economist Jean Drèze on Monday marched to Raj Bhawan demanding immediate withdrawal of  ‘Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for Food subsidy’  and restore the old system of providing rice at Re 1 per kg to the poor people at ration shops. Drèze, who was stopped at Raj Bhawan by the district...

-Macroscan.org Indian banking today is at a tipping point. Banks are burdened with non-performing assets, incurring significant losses due to provisioning and unable to sustain credit growth, and therefore changes are both necessary and inevitable. There are possible strategies with very different implications: many leading banks could be restructured with state support and encouraged to regain the status they had as major instruments of development policy in the two decades after...

  Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) or cash transfer might appear attractive on papers, but in reality it is opposed by its beneficiaries when implemented. Something similar to this has happened in the Nagri block of Ranchi district, where cash is being transferred to the aadhaar seeded bank accounts of beneficiaries in lieu of providing subsidized foodgrains. Cash transfers in the public distribution system (PDS) have been in operation in the Nagri block...

-Livemint.com Universal basic income (UBI) cannot come at the cost of existing welfare schemes and exclusive reliance on Aadhaar-linked cash transfers can prove to be short-sighted, says Carnegie India report New Delhi: A universal basic income (UBI) for Indian citizens cannot come at the cost of withdrawing existing welfare schemes and an exclusive reliance on Aadhaar-linked welfare payments for cash transfers can prove to be short-sighted, says new research. The central design features...