-The Hindu Other proofs of identity will be allowed till March 31 New Delhi: From April 1, workers in rural areas enrolled under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), which mandates 100 days of work for a household a year, must have an Aadhaar card. Those who have registered under the scheme will be required to give furnish proof of possession of Aadhaar or undergo the enrolment process till March...

-The Hindu Personal data of 1.5 crore PDS beneficiaries laid bare without password protection Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government may have compromised the privacy of Public Distribution System beneficiaries, by making available their personal information online. Personal data such as monthly income, electoral card details, consumer numbers of power and cooking gas connections of 1.5 crore residents were published on the Civil Supplies website, throwing open the possibility of misuse by private companies and...

-The Hindu Plea against govt. order making it mandatory for scholarship schemes. The Centre was caught red-handed defying a Supreme Court order directing that no citizen will be denied benefits under a government scheme for want of an Aadhaar card. A Bench of Justices Gopala V. Gowda and A.K. Goel discovered that the Centre had been insisting that students submit their Aadhaar number for applying for government scholarship schemes. On October 15, 2015, a...

-The Hindu We need to rethink social safety nets in India’s growing economy so that they can also focus on the accidents of life rather than solely on the accidents of birth. Sometimes the grand narratives of the Left and the Right do not seem to have any relationship with the lived experiences of ordinary Indians. For the past two decades, the Left has tried to expand social welfare programmes for the...

It was a Rashomon moment for the readers of the First Common Review Mission report when they heard activists complaining about the pension system of Rajasthan during a recent press conference held in the capital. The First Common Review Mission (CRM) report, which was prepared during the month of May this year by a team of 32 experts had observed that pension related payments under the National Social Assistance Programmes (NSAP)...