A Cabinet panel headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will decide on Wednesday if the government should spend nearly Rs 15,000 crore more to duplicate an ongoing exercise to capture biometric data. The government had earlier authorised the Registrar General of India under the home ministry to create the National Population Register, a task that required RGI to collect biometric data of nearly one billion people and get them an...
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PDS in peril by R Ramakumar
The promotion of the PDS as an Aadhaar application would fundamentally alter its form and character. NO scheme of the Indian government would be transformed more fundamentally by Aadhaar than the public distribution system (PDS). The nature of this transformation appears to be taking the form of a virtual dismantling of the PDS; even if a skeletal fair price shop (FPS, or ration shop) system continues to exist, it is likely...
More »Learning from each other
-The Business Standard It is not often that the government accepts the report of a committee promptly without detailed scrutiny. But an exception has been made – and with good reasons – in respect of the report of the task force on reforming the public distribution system (PDS). The committee, headed by Unique Identification Authority of India Chairman Nandan Nilekani, has made several valuable recommendations that can cure some of the...
More »Madhya Pradesh's high-tech solution for PDS by Latha Jishnu and Jyotika Sood
State links PDS to UID to plug leakages in food supplies but gaps remain Madhya Pradesh has opted for the technologically most sophisticated—and costliest—method for revamping its public distribution system (PDS). It is one of a handful of states that is trying to ensure that subsidised food reaches the segment it is meant for, the poorest of the population or those below the poverty line (BPL). But the route it has...
More »The UID Project and Welfare Schemes by Reetika Khera
This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...
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