-Livemint.com The government expenditure on MGNREGS in 2017-18 was nearly Rs. 25,000 crore more than what was spent in 2013-14 New Delhi: The national rural employment guarantee scheme saw a record expenditure of Rs63,887 crore in 2017-18, the highest since it was launched 12 years ago, showed data provided by the government on Monday. However, high demand for work from rural households in a normal monsoon year (2017) also suggests acute rural distress,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The central government will soon set up a real-time online database of ration cards and the Beneficiaries under the national food security scheme to end any possibility of anyone procuring a fake or more than one ration card from any part of the country. The system will also enable lakhs of migrant workers to get subsidised foodgrains irrespective of the place from where the cards...

-The Hindu Business Line The SC interim order presents the biometric ID as a fait accompli for the underprivileged Last week’s interim order of the Supreme Court on a batch of petitions challenging Aadhaar may have provided temporary relief to a section of the population, but it appears to have simultaneously served notice on another section – a largely disadvantaged one — that the contentious biometric identification is something of a fait...

  A national-level public hearing, which was organized at the Gandhi Peace Foundation (Delhi) on 15th March, 2018, has revealed that the intended Beneficiaries of various entitlement-based welfare schemes and programmes of the Central government are witnessing difficulties and impediments in accessing the benefits and services. During the public hearing, which was organized by the Right to Food Campaign along with partnering grassroots-level organizations, poor and marginalized citizens from across 14 states...

-TheWire.in Food rights group says this is just a changing of goalposts, questions why rules have not been formulated and state food commission not constituted despite court nudge. New Delhi: Though in order to overcome the problem of exclusions faced due to Aadhaar-linked Point of Sales (PoS) machines installed at ration shops, the Delhi cabinet today approved the scheme for doorstep delivery of rations under the Public Distribution System, food rights activists...