-Ideas for India In 2007, Bihar introduced the coupon system in PDS to curb leakages at fair price shops. This column argues that even though the administrative logic of the coupon system is fundamentally sound, such reform can be effective only when accompanied by institutional transformations that broker change in the existing local politics of inclusion and exclusion.  The performance of Bihar’s public distribution system (PDS) remains a topic of considerable national...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Election Commission has suspended its five-month-old project to clean the electoral rolls by linking and authenticating voter I-card details with Aadhaar data, days after the Supreme Court ruled that the unique identification number could be used only for PDS and LPG distribution schemes. "All further activities relating to collection/feeding/seeding of Aadhaar number being undertaken under the National Electoral Rolls Purification and Authentication Programme (NERPAP) shall...

-The Hindu Bench agrees with Centre that freezing Aadhaar registration at this point will do no good Leaving the decision to sign up for Aadhaar entirely to citizens, the Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that “balance of interest” was better served if obtaining the unique identity number was made optional and not mandatory. Hearing criticism that even newborn babies were made to register for Aadhaar, a three-judge Bench led by Justice J. Chelameswar,...

-Business Standard A report published by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) on Thursday revealed a sharp 24 percentage points drop in the number of rural households using kerosene for lighting, and an equal increase in electrified households since 1999-2000, the date of the last such relevant survey. Titled 'Energy Sources of Indian Households for Cooking and Lighting', the report traces the usage patterns of primary sources of energy in cooking and...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The government will on priority distribute nearly 27 million tonnes of wheat it procured this year under the relaxed quality norms through ration shops, welfare schemes and open market sales. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) procured 28.08 million tonnes of wheat this year, of which 26.62 million tonnes was purchased under the relaxed quality norms because the crop got damaged due to unseasonal rains early this year. FCI generally...