-CaravanMagazine.in The economist Jean Drèze’s book, Sense and Solidarity, published in late 2017, deals with the impact of Aadhaar on social-welfare programmes, such as the National Food Security Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, among other things. Drèze was a member of the United Progressive Alliance government’s advisory council, which designed the NFSA and MGNREGS. He co-authored some of the essays in this book with colleagues and...

-The Hindu Social audits ensure a citizen-centric mode of accountability The breakdown of institutions has underlined the fact that democracy — and especially public funds — need eternal public vigilance. But in India, the elites close ranks to neutralise voices of dissent and alarm, thus preventing public vigilance. Democratic governance needs the citizen to be legally empowered to ask questions, file comPLAints, and be a part of the corrective process. Social audits, as...

-The Indian Express In 2013, the Supreme Court ordered the poll panel to introduce VVPATs in a phased manner, and the Commission has committed to have it in PLAce by the time of the 2019 general elections. New Delhi: ARGUING that the involvement of private PLAyers could hurt the credibility of the electoral process, the Election Commission (EC) rejected the government’s proposal to buy voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) units from private...

-The Hindu Telangana’s experience is instructive The institutionalisation of “social audits” to ensure implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been challenging. Since being included in the 2005 Act at the behest of social movements, social audits have been ineffective in most parts of the country due to government indifference. So far, 26 States have created social audit units (SAUs), but the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG’s) detailed guidelines...

-PTI New Delhi: The Central Information Commission has directed the Bureau of Immigration, an agency exempted from RTI Act disclosures, to give a person details of his travel as he needed it for defence in penal proceedings that landed him in jail. The CIC underlined that any impediment to a person's self-defence would be a breach of human rights. The case pertains to RTI applicant M. Dinesh, who had sought information related to...