After describing the origin, the main features and some of the impacts of Bolsa Família, a conditional cash transfer family welfare programme that has become one of Brazil’s showpiece achievements, this essay discusses the changes in the programme over time as well as the current and future challenges.

The design of public cash transfers involves a careful balancing of policy priorities and objectives. Variations in the rationale for a conditional cash transfer shape benefit amounts, coverage, duration of programme participation, targeting practices and the definition of conditionality.

The current perception that cash transfers can replace public provision of basic goods and services and become a catch-all solution for poverty reduction is false. Where cash transfers have helped to reduce poverty, they have added to public provision, not replaced it.

There is a case to be made for cash transfers replacing the sale of food through the public distribution system. This article argues that cash transfers offer many advantages over in-kind food transfers, and that their design can address potential pitfalls pointed out by critics.

The National Food Security Bill, as drafted by the National Advisory Council, contains various reforms to reduce theft. However, the track record of previous legislation does not inspire confidence that the proposed reforms will be sufficient to ensure secure access to food for those who need it.

The Government of India has announced that subsidies on fertilisers, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas will be replaced by cash transfers to end users. A close examination of the objectives of the subsidies in fertiliser and kerosene and the implications of the shift raises some challenging questions.

Serious differences have cropped up between minister for environment and forests (MoEF) Jairam Ramesh and his director general of forest Dilip Kumar over the management of funds under the National Action Plan of Climate Change (NAPCC). The amount in question is the allocation of `46,000 crores slated to afforest five million hectares under the NAPCC.

The nuclear power plant project at Jaitapur may have cleared the ground but has run into a hurdle with the finance ministry refusing to provide a blanket guarantee to the project funding.

The Budget division of the ministry has informed Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) that the government would not provide an

Leading financial institutions upped the ante on their future role in mitigating climate change as they called for more effective forest-carbon regulations during a United Nations report launch in London, just months ahead of an international climate change meeting to be held in South Africa.

Political hostility over global-warming policy in the United States is causing collateral damage. Plans for a national Climate Service deserve better. (Editorial)

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