Should they be targeted? Should they go to individuals or households? Are conditionalities necessary? Without a full consideration of these issues, cash transfers will remain an expensive gamble Having worked on cash transfers for over 25 years, and being an economist, I find recent criticisms of the idea shrill and ill-informed. Only a right-wing ideologue would call them a panacea or a cure-all. They would merely be a vast improvement on...

-Governance Now An alumnus of IIT Kanpur, Ram Sewak Sharma is a 1978 batch Indian administrative service officer belonging to Jharkhand cadre. Sharma is praised for laying down IT infrastructure in Jharkhand. In his role as the director general of unique identification authority of India (UIDAI) Sharma is chauffeuring ‘Aadhaar-enabled service delivery’ which would result in saving huge financial resources to the public exchequer. In an interview with Pratap Vikram Singh,...

-Jagran.com Parliamentarians on Wednesday raised concerns about the existing corruption in the UPA government's flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), saying it needs to be revised to ensure better implementation and reach. Speaking at a seminar on 'Hunger in India: A Silent Emergency', Rajya Sabha member M.S. Swaminathan said the time has come to rework the job guarantee scheme."It has a tremendous potential and government needs to revise it...

-PTI Integrating unique identification number project “Aadhaar” with various social sector schemes like rural employment guarantee programme and PDS, would yield rich dividends for the government, says a study. According to cost benefit analysis study done by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), the investment on Aadhaar project would provide a return of as high as 52.85 per cent to the government. Substantial benefits would accrue to the government by...

-The Pioneer Integrating unique identification number project “Aadhaar” with various social sector schemes like rural employment guarantee programme and PDS would yield rich dividends for the government according to cost benefit analysis study done by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP). “After taking into account all the costs, and making modest assumptions about leakages, the study finds that the Aadhaar project would yield an internal rate of return of 52.85...