When India embarked on its “unique ID” project in the fall of 2010, pledging to distribute unique 12-digit numbers to 1.2 billion people, the hope was that hundreds of millions of Indians who don’t have a passport, driver’s license or other credible identity document would get one – and with it, a ticket to essential government and private sector services. A new survey led by Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New...

In what could be perceived as a disturbing trend, vaccination in rural Bihar has been adversely affected due to casteism. According to the recent survey report, which was prepared after an on-the-spot study in 14 villages of Bihar’s nine districts, several instances of “caste discrimination” have came to fore. For instance, such was the social divide in a Rohtas village that vaccinations could not take place either in Brahmin’s tola (colony) or...

In 2005, when the Labour Party decided to implement the National Identity Project (NIP) in the UK, it drew severe criticism from many quarters, including the Tories, who later scrapped the NIP after coming to power. A report by the London School of Economics (LSE), which stated the project is “unsafe in law” and should be regarded as a “potential danger to public interest”, was instrumental in buttressing the arguments...

-The Times of India JAIPUR: A day after TOI published a report, "Orphans in peril as RTE mandates parents' income, caste certificates," the Rajasthan government's social justice and empowerment department has written to the education department to soon clarify the issue of certificates mandated under RTE for orphaned children. The report had highlighted how orphans were being asked documents like parents' income certificate, caste certificate, age certificate etc. to get admission in...

The National Advisory Council (NAC) wants the government to assess if its cash incentive scheme for the welfare of girls meets its objective of reducing gender selection, as there’s no official study yet to suggest that it does. As part of its recommendations for a national policy to stem India’s declining sex ratio, NAC also sought the formation of a communication and advocacy strategy and stronger laws to prevent the misuse...