-Live Mint Attempt to broad-base direct benefits transfer plan may help shore up the Congress’s standing among rural population The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government plans to include its flagship rural job guarantee programme in the second phase of its ambitious direct benefits transfer (DBT) plan, under which beneficiaries of social welfare programmes will receive money directly in their Aadhaar-linked bank accounts. The attempt to broad-base the cash transfer plan before several...

Introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2011, the UPA government’s Food Security Bill is finally going to be discussed in the current (Budget) Session of Parliament. The proposed legislation is now slated to see many additional amendments from the government, following criticism from the States, NGOs and diverse stake-holders working on access to food and child health. Attempt here is to summarise in a Q & A format the...

-Economic and Political Weekly A debate on the study "A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Aadhaar" conducted by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy which was discussed in the EPW of 2 February 2013. Sumathi Chandrashekaran, Shekhar H Kumar, Smriti Parsheera, Ila Patnaik, Madhavi Pundit, Suyash Rai, Ajay Shah A debate on the study “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Aadhaar” conducted by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy which was discussed in...

-Economic and Political Weekly Before I take issue with some of the points made in the NIPFP response to this comment, it may be useful to recapitulate a few points on which there appears to be agreement: (1) Aadhaar-integration can resolve only certain types of Leakages, for which reliable data is unavailable; this was not adequately accounted for in the cost-benefit exercise; (2) the NIPFP study has a fragile basis (in...

-The Business Standard Nuclear Power Corp of India Ltd (NPCIL) has denied allegation by a Sri Lankan interest group that the Kudankulam plant in Tamil Nadu was leaking radiation, and said the phase 1 of the project would be ready soon and power production would start by April-end. The Sri Lankan group, the People's Movement Against Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, on Saturday alleged that the plant had been leaking radiation since February...