-The Indian Express The UPA’s cash transfer scheme — delivering over Rs.3.2 lakh crore in subsidies and welfare programmes to the poor, directly to their bank accounts — has raised fears in many quarters about the capacity of a rickety state apparatus to cope with messy implementation issues. Our collective self-confidence about being able to implement any new policy is so low today, we seem to be paralysed by the mere...

-NDTV The Election Commission will decide today whether the government violated the rules by announcing a major overhaul of India's welfare system while Gujarat is in the midst of elections. The opposition BJP has complained that the announcement of the direct cash transfer scheme violates the model code of conduct, which kicks in as soon as elections are announced and forbids parties and candidates from sharing decisions or policies that could influence...

-The Indian Express Financial justification for Aadhaar doesn’t require it to cover entire population or have multiple uses Some people think of Aadhaar as a magic bullet for India. Others oppose it for privacy concerns. The government has showcased Aadhaar as a tool for targeted subsidy payments. As with all government programmes, the public should be sceptical, and the government must demonstrate through a cost-benefit analysis that the expenditure of public money...

-The Telegraph Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ambitious plan to replace the leak-prone subsidy regime with direct cash transfers to bank accounts of beneficiaries may get delayed in Bengal because of tardy progress of biometric enrolment of residents in the National Population Register (NPR). Data available with the state’s directorate of census operations, which is overseeing NPR biometric enrolment, show that only 18.8 per cent of the population has been covered under the...

-The Hindustan Times The government will begin switching over to a system of direct cash transfers for welfare in the New Year and hopes to roll it out all over the country in the ensuing 364 days. This is a radical departure from the existing welfare delivery mechanism so riddled with leaks that a mere fraction of the benefits reach the intended target groups. By co-building these transfers with biometric enumeration...