-Scroll.in Supreme Court guidelines have made it clear beneficiaries cannot be denied access to welfare schemes even if they don’t have Aadhaar, activists say. An 11-year-old girl in Jharkhand’s Simdega district has died of starvation last fortnight, months after her family’s ration card was cancelled because it was not linked to their Aadhaar number, say Right to Food Campaign activists. With no school mid-day meals available during her Durga Puja holidays,...

-Scroll.in But study of the pilot scheme also finds that 67% of respondents now prefer cash transfers. In three Union territories where the government is running an experimental project to distribute cash instead of subsidised foodgrains, a third of beneficiaries surveyed said they either had not received any money at all (with or without proof) or did not know if they had received it. This despite government claims that 99% of...

-TheWire.in This comes after Maneka Gandhi recently said the government was considering moving from food transfers to cash transfers. New Delhi: The Ministry of Women and Child Development has said there is no plan of replacing hot cooked meals, which the government currently provides to children between the ages of three and six years, by either uncooked food such as ‘nutrient packets’, ready-to-cook food or cash. “There has been a lot of discussion...

-TheWire.in The government is finalising a pilot project in line with NITI Aayog’s recent suggestion that children and mothers be given cash transfers instead of cooked or uncooked food. At a conference on under-nutrition organised by the Ministry of Women and Child Development this week, Union minister Maneka Gandhi said that the government is keen to overhaul the Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) and withdraw the provisions of cooked food and rations...

-Hindustan Times Women don’t have enough power within households to insist that the cash provided be used for nutritional needs. The THR system is a way to ensure that they at least get some essential nutrition. The decision to do away with take-home rations (THR) in aanganwadis for infants under three and pregnant and lactating mothers, and to replace the scheme with cash transfers is not a good idea. The initial impetus...