-The Hindu Business Line From a severely critical stand against Aadhaar in 2014, the Modi-led BJP in power has made a sharp U-turn to bulldoze its way into having every Indian scanned, tagged and labelled. A timeline of the country’s chequered date with the unique identification project You’ve probably read the WhatsApp joke about a post-Aadhaar scenario in 2020 India. A man orders pizza over phone. He is asked for his Aadhaar...

-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...

-Deccan Herald The government’s decision to make Aadhaar mandatory for children to avail midday meals in schools and nutrition under the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme as well as for disabled students to get Scholarships is wrong and ill-conceived. The decision was notified this week and it has given the students only a few weeks to comply with it. Aadhaar has been made mandatory for 11 services under a number...

-Hindustan Times The last few weeks have seen a spate of government notifications making Aadhaar mandatory for receiving the benefits of government programmes. The most recent orders relate to an Aadhaar requirement for children to access schools (even under their fundamental right to education), mid-day meals, supplementary nutrition (ICDS) and Scholarships. These directives raise a number of ethical as well as practical questions, besides violating children’s right to education, nutrition and...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has voiced shock that a Scholarship for underprivileged meritorious students had not been revised since the scheme was launched in 2008, leaving it at less than half of what households now spend on average on a higher secondary student. According to a survey on social consumption, households spend Rs 12,619 a year on a plus-2 student's schooling, while the yearly amount under the National Means-cum-Merit...