-The Telegraph New Delhi: Activists and researchers today accused the Centre of systematically curtailing the 100-day rural job scheme by not releasing funds for the payment of Beneficiaries, diluting norms to avoid giving compensation and cancelling cards of genuine job-seekers. They said payments to around 10 crore poor workers were getting delayed because of the lack of funds. The Union rural development ministry denied the charges. At a news conference, Nikhil Dey of the...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Blundering along, dangerously -Usha Ramanathan
-Frontline.in The Aadhaar project’s headlong push towards “total” enrolment of Indian citizens threatens the privacy of individuals on an unprecedented scale, while its patchy biometric system acts as a tool of denial for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the UID chugs along, regardless, fuelled by the avarice of private interests who seek to cash in on citizen data. IN the last seven years, the right to privacy of Indian citizens has been...
More »Aadhaar trouble: How a woman's wages under MGNREGA were transferred to someone else's account -Rajendran Narayanan, Sakina Dhorajiwala & Sabhil Nath Paikra
-Scroll.in Errors in linking Aadhaar to bank accounts under MNGREGA has meant many workers are going unpaid. It is easy to wake a person who is sleeping, but difficult to wake someone pretending to be asleep. This aphorism rings true for several decisions of the Modi government. One such example is the manner in which the government has pushed the unique identity project, despite several Supreme Court orders stating that the Aadhaar...
More »UP govt to waive off agriculture loans of 1.5 crore small farmers
-The Times of India VARANASI: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi would take the final call on waiving agriculture loan in the first meeting of his cabinet sometime this week. UP agriculture minister Surya Pratap Shahi said a list of 1.5 crore farmers has been finalised and sent to the chief minister. Farm loan waiver was one of the biggest pre-poll promises that the Bharatiya Janata Party had made to...
More »Feeding insecurities -Reetika Khera
-The Hindu Business Line Aadhaar does more damage than good in welfare programmes It is widely believed that Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (ABBA) is necessary to improve the delivery of welfare programmes such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), Public Distribution System (PDS), social security pensions, and so on. This is a misconception. We have been studying these programmes for a decade, focusing mainly on the source of leakages and...
More »