Beware of the new privy purses

The UPA government has described its plan to roll out direct-cash-transfer-based delivery of various subsidies and welfare programmes—of Rs 3.2 lakh crore a year, beginning 2013—as a game changer. Indeed, a cash transfer programme on such a massive scale has the potential to radically alter the dynamics of India’s current political economy, driven as it currently is by the entrenched vested interests which have taken deep roots over 20 years post the 1991 economic reforms.

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