This paper makes the case for converting some of the massive subsidies and significant expenditures on directly targeted poverty reduction programmes into conditional cash transfers. All the five CCTs it proposes would be primarily targeted at the below poverty line population. It also addresses the minimum requirements to ensure that CCTs succeed, and actually reach the poor instead of meeting the fate of usual directly targeted poverty reduction programmes. It also notes the fact that while the identification of the
poor has so far proved beset with errors of exclusion and inclusion, those can be mostly resolved through a revised methodology that has already been almost finalized, and will be implemented 2010.