-Livemint.com   The main focus of the survey was to find out if the drought and adverse weather over the past few years is turning into a famine    New Delhi: Even as half of India is reeling under a second consecutive drought year, a survey of the chronically drought-striken Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh has unearthed grim details of crop loss, disputes over water, starvation, and deaths due to hunger and malnutrition. The...

-Livemint.com What’s essential for the unique identification number to continue is a strong law. But what should it look like? A key thrust of the 2012 writ petition filed in the Aadhaar case (Puttaswamy versus Union of India) was that the executive action in implementing Aadhaar was unconstitutional in the absence of a law. Later developments in the case, including the government’s argument that there is no fundamental right to privacy, and...

-Hindustan Times A group of Delhi University students is arranging professional training for over 20 transgender people to help make them financially independent.   The group of students from Ramjas College have roped in experts to train members of the transgender community in jewellery making under a project called ‘Transcreation’.   “We contacted some NGOs who work with transgender community and started working with them. We want to empower the community and for that the...

-The Hindu What happened at Shishubhawan is symptomatic of how deep the rot is in India's crumbling public health infrastructure. It has been two months since news and reports of the deaths of 40 infants at Shishubhawan, the largest paediatric care centre in eastern India, broke. The facility is for critically-ill children from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. By the end of September, 56 deaths were reported in a span on 12 days. Even...

-Livemint.com The success of cash transfers will depend on how well the government addresses design bugs The recent economics conclave hosted by the finance ministry in the capital has rekindled the debate on cash transfers in India. Among the invitees to the conclave was one of the most vocal critics of India’s transition to direct cash transfers, Jean Dreze, a development economist and an advisor to the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance (UPA)...