-Scroll.in A bill proposes creation of a national DNA data bank, without requisite safeguards for privacy, and opens the information to everything from civic disputes to compilation of statistics. On Wednesday, the Narendra Modi government told the Supreme Court that India's citizen's have no fundamental right to privacy. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi referred to a 1950 court verdict which held that the right to privacy was not a fundamental right while defending...

-The Indian Express The SC directive that Aadhaar can’t be made mandatory for any service — which the government can’t oppose until Aadhaar gets legal validity — has complicated the issue. On January 1, 2013, the Congress-led UPA government launched the Direct Benefits Transfer scheme, centred around the Aadhaar project begun a few years earlier. Teething troubles and implementation bottlenecks followed, the interest of the outgoing dispensation waned, and both Aadhaar...

-The Indian Express Mumbai: Aadhaar the basis of several fresh proposals, including introducing Aadhaar-based biometric systems in all Central government offices. Despite the decisive push given to it by the NDA government since it came to power and by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, the ambitious Aadhaar project is far from meeting its target of universal coverage by June this year, also impacting the Direct Benefits Transfer Scheme that is based...

-The Indian Express It is easy to see why the Unique Identity (UID) project, also known as Aadhaar, has caught the imagination of many administrators, economists and policymakers. Identity verification is a routine problem in India and Aadhaar sounds like a foolproof solution. The idea is really smart and the technology is cutting-edge. After the initial hurdle of universal enrolment, numerous applications are possible: monitoring the attendance of government employees, linking...

-Business Standard Reduction in leakages in the Public Distribution System (PDS) is driven by marked improvement in states such as Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Bihar, noted economist and former member of the National Advisory Council Jean Dreze has said in a recent report. In an email interview to Mayank Mishra, he said the National Food Security Act should bring the bulk of the population under a single category with clear entitlements. Edited...