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...

-The Times of India As many as 14,004 farmers committed suicide in 2011 countrywide, the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau has noted. The number is lower than the previous year's figure of 15,933 but the dip might be much less considering that Chhattisgarh, which recorded 1,412 farmer suicides in 2010, claimed that there were no farmer suicides at all in the state in 2011. As always, Maharashtra fared...

-Live Mint Almost all of us have, through the unfortunate experience of a relative, an acquaintance or a friend, been exposed to the trauma of suicide; personally I have been associated with such an experience thrice. This unnatural and often violent form of death left me confounded (I never saw it coming) and hugely frustrated (at the loss that could have been prevented with timely help). For more than a decade, the...

-The Economic Times Heaps of dusty files continue to grow in government buildings and sensitive papers are mysteriously lost, leaked or dramatically reduced to ashes in fires while the six-year-old plan to modernise and digitise governance remains tied up in what it should eliminate - red tape. The latest casualty was the Union home ministry, where a fire was reported on Sunday, days after a blaze engulfed Mumbai's Mantralaya, killing people and...

-The Times of India These are one set of statistics Kerala will not be proud to own up to: God's own country, and not the badlands of north India, is the most crime-prone state, ahead of Uttar Pradesh and even Delhi. The latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures comparing incidents of crime with the population of a state, notes Kerala is most affected by crime and Kochi is the most dangerous...