-Ideas for India Soon after Aadhaar was made compulsory for availing midday meals in schools, the government claimed that the move had helped expose several instances of schools siphoning off funds under the scheme by reporting inflated student enrolment. Comparing Official data with that from the Indian Human Development Survey, this column shows that corruption in the scheme is less than what is being alleged - and not of the nature...

-Livemint.com Unlike the dhoti-clad, topi-wearing quintessential ‘kisan’, the new Indian farmer is vocal and tech-savvy New Delhi: In the winter of 1988 when the feisty farmer leader from Uttar Pradesh, Mahendra Singh Tikait, laid siege to Delhi with thousands of cultivators and their cattle literally creating a mess of the boat club lawns, agriculture’s share in India’s gross domestic product (GDP) was about 30%. About three decades later, the farm sector’s share in...

-Livemint.com The Aadhaar project is a textbook example of how not to design and execute a public policy initiative in India When it was first launched in 2009, Aadhaar signalled a promise to repair the corroded plumbing of India’s leaky public delivery systems. The unique biometric identity would help reduce duplicate and ghost entries in the list of beneficiaries of government schemes, and pave the way for direct benefit transfers to them...

-CaravanMagazine.in In mid 2011, Diane Coffey and Dean Spears, both visiting researchers at Economics and Planning Unit of Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi and also assistant professors at the University of Texas at Austin, moved to Sitapur, a district in Uttar Pradesh, to conduct a study on poor early-life health and process of stunting among many Indian children. While Coffey attempted to understand the challenges of raising a baby in the...

-PTI New Delhi: Tomato prices, which have skyrocketed up to Rs. 100/kg, are more likely to decline over the next fortnight as supplies from southern and other growing states are expected to improve, said a senior ICAR official. Retail tomato prices have gone through the roof for more than a month now in most parts of the country and are still ruling high up to 100 per kg, as per the Consumer...