MasterCard Worldwide, a leading global payments company, today said it has developed a payment solution for ‘Aadhaar’. ‘Aadhaar’ is a 12-digit Unique Identification Number (UID) that captures basic demographic and biometric information of Indian residents. The UID will make it possible for residents to establish their identity with financial institutions thereby providing them a gateway into the formal banking system. This payment solution will enable Aadhaar holders to perform payment...

The government is planning a complete overhaul of the way the power sector is financed and subsidies are delivered, attempting to address a funding shortfall delaying the construction of electricity projects and worsening a chronic power deficit that threatens to sap growth in India’s energy-hungry economy.This exercise is based on a report submitted by a panel headed by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, to the power...

The two day 43rd Session of the Indian Labour Conference (ILC), the apex national tripartite body that discusses key issues affecting labour and employment and provides policy perspectives and recommendations, concluded in New Delhi today. The Conference was inaugurated by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Tuesday 23rd November 2010. Senior level representatives of the three pillars of the tripartism, Trade Unions, Employers’ Associations and Government, participated in the deliberations...

It is quite likely that a few weeks from now someone will be knocking at your doors and asking for your fingerprints. If you agree, your fingerprints will enter a national database, along with personal characteristics (age, sex, occupation, and so on) that have already been collected from you, unless you were missed in the “Census household listing” earlier this year. The purpose of this exercise is to build the National...

More public private partnerships are needed to create opportunities for the rural population India might have created its mark in the services sector — especially in information technology — on the global map, but the development of the rural sector still has a lot of ground to cover. Discussing how to innovate rural entrepreneurship towards employment at the India Economic Summit, various speakers called for increased public private partnerships to create...