After announcing the direct cash transfer rollout from January 1, the focus has come back on the Food Security Bill, for which the UPA government is looking at the Budget Session for passage. The parliamentary standing committee is learnt to have given its report to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.

Along with direct cash transfer, the UPA is banking on the Food and Land Bills to yield the Congress rich dividends. “The standing committee report could be tabled in the Lok Sabha this week. The government will (then) move to the Cabinet with its final draft,” a senior official said.

India economy is expected to grow by about 5.5 per cent this year, according to initial estimates by the World Bank. It means the multilateral agency expects the economy to grow by more than 5.5 per cent in the October-December quarter.

The Bank might also peg India’s GDP to grow by a little less than six per cent next year and seven per cent in 2014 and 2015. Kaushik Basu, senior vice-president & chief economist at the World Bank (he was India’s chief economic advisor till a few months earlier), today told a press conference on the sidelines of an economic conclave that the multilateral institution was likely to peg India’s growth at 5.5 per cent in 2012.

The government today informed Parliament that the process to implement direct transfer of cash subsidy on kerosene sold through public distribution system (PDS) has been initiated in 11 identified states and Union territories.

In written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena said, “The department of food and public distribution proposes to implement direct transfer of food subsidy to the targeted public distribution system beneficiaries in six Union territories (UTs) on a pilot basis.”

The pilot project at Kotkasim, Rajasthan has revealed loopholes, they say

Sampat Rai is a resident of the Kotkasim block of Rajasthan’s Alwar district, where the Cash for Kerosene Scheme (CFKS), an experiment with cash payment of kerosene subsidies, was launched last year on a pilot basis. Mr. Rai is lucky as, unlike other residents of the area, he has a bank account where the kerosene subsidies are supposed to be transferred after he buys kerosene from the market at the market price. But receiving Rs. 90 over the year has increasingly become an expensive affair for the octogenarian as his son has to forego a day’s wage to accompany him to the nearest bank, which is 6 km away from their house.

The massive scale and complexity of major subsidy schemes are likely to delay the ambitious plan of limiting state subsidy on food, fertiliser and petroleum products only to the poor by directly tr

The government is likely to shoot down the department of financial services’ (DFS) plan to appoint common banking correspondent companies for transferring cash to poor people, and replace it with a

New Delhi: The Congress scrambled on Tuesday to put the stamp of its “hand” on ‘direct cash transfers’, calling it an election promise fulfilled and lining up Rahul Gandhi to lead the celebrations

Just as the government embarks on a massive plan to deliver social benefits through direct cash transfers, a study by the Asian Development Bank has endorsed the devlivery mechanism saying it helps