-The Indian Express Budget 2016 has a greater focus on the rural and social sectors. But the challenge will lie in improving delivery systems. Indian agriculture as well as the rural sector have been in distress in the last two years due to deficit rainfall and the decline in global commodity prices. The rural non-agriculture sector, too, has been under stress due to the lack of demand for manufacturing and services. It...

-The Hindu TrustID has been developed by Swabhimaanya, registered authentication user agency with UIDAI Whether hiring a domestic help or taking a cab, authenticating the identity of a person is a big challenge in India. A newly-launched mobile application aims to fill this gap by enabling such verifications using aadhaar. The application — TrustID — has been developed by Swabhimaanya, which is a registered authentication user agency with the Unique Identification Authority of...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: It’s quite possible that in this Parliament session, India will make the transition from being a wasteful welfare state to a reformed economy that allocates scarce resources efficiently. The Modi government on Thursday introduced the aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016. When signed into law, the bill will make aadhaar -- the unique biometric identification number -- central to all social...

-The Indian Express Central allocations for agriculture are less important than the state budgets. I took the night train to Delhi to participate in budget-day discussions and my co-passenger, who boarded the train in ravaged Punjab, asked me a simple question: “50 farmers are committing suicide everyday; will the budget end farmer suicides?” My answer was — and still is — “No.” The Union budget is just the government’s bookkeeping exercise...

-Business Standard The government could introduce a regulatory framework to ensure that the biometric details of citizens it collects is kept discreet and used only to generate aadhaar numbers or authenticate them. The aadhaar Bill, which could be introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday, is likely to introduce this regulatory framework. It could also to propose that in cases of national security, an officer not below the rank of a joint...