The Aadhaar or UID project has grave implications for every Indian. It will enable the government to profile every citizen and track their movements and transactions. There is no guarantee that intimate personal information -- pre-existing illnesses, romantic relationships etc -- won't be shared with other agencies, warns Praful Bidwai. An elaborate charade has begun with the rolling out of the first Aadhaar unique identity numbers in a tribal district of Maharashtra by...

India has been ranked 67, way below neighbouring countries like China and Pakistan, in a new global hunger index by the International Food Policy Research Institute. The index, released on Monday, rated 84 countries on the basis of three leading indicators -- prevalence of child malnutrition, rate of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient. China is rated much ahead of India at the ninth place. The 2010 Global...

The youth will not take no for an answer. Five years on, the RTI comes of age. At four feet something, Santosh’s energy belies her petite frame. The school dropout was introduced to RTI through activist Arvind Kejriwal, and now, at Parivartan’s Sundar Nagri office, she holds fort, helping others acquire everything from BPL and ration cards to school admissions through RTI. Threats and attacks by local authorities who dubbed her...

The untiring champion of the downtrodden and civil rights and former IAS official (1956 batch) of the Andhra Pradesh cadre S R Sankaran passed away on Thursday in Hyderabad. A bachelor, Sanakaran was 76. Though retired in 1992, he never called off his mission to defend the rights of the marginalised sections. Be it government, Maoists, civil rights organisations, Supreme Court or Planning Commission of India, his services were most sought...

In the long speeches made at the opening ceremony of the CW games, every important individual, department or institution that made a contribution, was acknowledged. Did anyone hear a word about the workers who made these world-class games possible? Maybe it was just a slip or maybe it was not considered necessary. Anyway, the workers were not there for the speeches, having been driven out of the capital just a...