-The Hindu A definite acknowledgement of the potential of Aadhar for public service delivery, and especially for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) by Bharat Bhatti, Jean Drèze, and Reetika Khera in their article “Experiments with Aadhaar” (editorial page, The Hindu, June 27, 2012), is a small step for Aadhaar, but a giant leap for the authors! Process re-engineering in government is never easy, there is enormous resistance both...

-The Hindu We are grateful to the busy Minister and his associates for taking the trouble of reading our article and responding to it. But we are concerned that in spite of all the wise talk, the bottom line remains an article of faith — “Aadhaar is a must.” The purpose of our article was to point out, first, that ground realities loom large in this matter, and second, that the role...

Contrary to the claims of the UIDAI, fingerprints are a highly inappropriate tool to uniquely identify individuals. Case 1: “There are nine checks on visa nationals arriving into the U.K. [United Kingdom]. The fingerprint matching check is the most recent. It is the least reliable. It is the least effective in terms of delivering against our requirements….” So stated Brodie Clark, the former head of the United Kingdom Border Force, to a...

-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...

-The Indian Express Marking their first step outside Chhattisgarh, three Class IX boys of Kottaguda village visited Visakhapatnam on an education tour in January. Among the few selected by their school, they were the first students from the south of river Palteru to make the journey. They were awed by the mighty sea and ships in the coastal Andhra town. Two of them instantly dreamt of becoming mariners. The two, Kaka...