Last week, an enterprising resident welfare association in Ghaziabad organised a registration camp for unique identification (UID) numbers. It found people queuing up till midnight for a week with infants, grandmothers and some with domestic workers in tow. No one had a clue as to how UID was different from the several other identity documents each of them had been scrupulously accumulating and treasuring. They were initially informed that all they...

-The Economic Times The Parliamentary Standing Committee on finance has questioned the government's move to introduce a right to food bill when it did not have a single, widely-accepted definition of the poor. The "criteria of identification of the poor remains nebulous," the Yashwant Sinha-headed committee has observed. The proposed food security bill, seen as the largest such legislation anywhere in the world, hinges on the definition of the poor. The...

Only 400,000 jobs a year were generated during UPA-1, compared with 12 million annually during the NDA’s tenure Key economic data released by the government on Friday shows that the first stint of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) generated a mere 400,000 jobs a year, compared with 12 million jobs annually during the tenure of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). During the period 2004-05 to...

When all failed, a police lathicharge did the trick. Farmers of Akaltara village were protesting against land acquisition for a month, but only after the police beat them up and arrested 78 men on a cold January evening, that things heated up. Opposition leaders rushed to the site and the government was forced to react. From Rs 8 lakh, compensation rates were hiked to Rs 17 lakh per acre. The...

The denial of equality, dignity and autonomy to persons with disabilities lies at the core of disability rights. “Disability need not be an obstacle to success … It is my hope that … this century will mark a turning point for inclusion of people with disabilities in the lives of their societies.” — Professor Stephen Hawking, “Foreword,” World Report on Disability. The inauguration of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of...