Cash transfers are now suggested by many as a silver bullet for addressing the problems that plague India’s anti-poverty programmes. This article argues instead for evidence-based policy and informed public debate to clarify the place, prospects and problems of cash transfers in India. By drawing on key empirical findings from academic and grey literature across the world an attempt is made to draw attention to three aspects of cash transfers...

In a radical departure from official welfare norms, the draft Food Security Bill has made adult women heads of households selected for distribution of subsidised food grain. This highly unusual move for general welfare schemes wasn't part of the original discussions on the food bill. The bill has shaped into the big daddy, or in this case the big mummy, of all welfare schemes by providing free food to pregnant...

The HRD ministry has taken the first step towards extending the Right to Education till the secondary level by making it part of the agenda of next month's meeting of state education ministers and the Central Advisory Board of Education. Sources say the idea of extending RTE is at the stage of infancy but the ministry is keen that the process should begin at right earnest so that it becomes...

The Planning Commission has set up a working group on elementary education and literacy. It will suggest measures for faster reduction in illiteracy with emphasis on gender, regional and social dimensions, and incentivise States to achieve cent per cent literacy during the XII Plan period. To be chaired by the Secretary, Department of Elementary Education and Literacy (Ministry of Human Resource Development), the group will suggest modifications to educational indicators, computation of...

NEARLY 80 km from Pune is Ralegan Siddhi village with about 3,000 people. It would have been one among the hundreds of nondescript villages in Parner taluk of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, had it not been for Kisan Baburao Hazare, 71, better known as Anna, or older brother, a title that was appended to his name after he made the village more than just a dot on the map. Until he was...