Like 2015, this year too unseasonal rainfall and hailstorm have taken the farmers by surprise. Recent media reports suggest that extreme weather event has damaged rabi crops in a number of states from north India. The Weekly Weather Report prepared for the week spanning 10-16 March, 2016, which was issued by the India Meteorological Department (IMD), shows that excessive rainfall was observed in Jammu and Kashmir, HIMAchal Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand,...

-The Indian Express There is reason to wonder if this law is intended to be taken seriously, except in getting everyone on the data base, making it a scheme to number the population, and giving extraordinary powers to the UIDAI. The disrespect for the law has been an abiding aspect of the UID project, never mind the government (facts have mattered as little, but that is for another time). In the beginning...

-The Hindu Rajya Sabha returns Aadhaar Bill to Lok Sabha with Opposition amendments . Even as the Opposition aired its concerns over the possibility of mass surveillance, Parliament passed the controversial Aadhaar Bill, 2016, after acrimonious debates in both Houses. In a day marked by high drama, hours after the Opposition succeeded in pushing through five amendments to the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, they were rejected in the Lok Sabha. The amendments...

-The Hindu The Aadhaar Bill opens the door to mass surveillance. This danger needs to be seen in the light of recent attacks on the right to dissent. No other country, and certainly no democratic country, has ever held its own citizens hostage to such a powerful infrastructure of surveillance. The Aadhaar project was sold to the public based on the claim that enrolment was “voluntary”. This basically meant that there was...

-The Hindu The steps taken towards social democracy are being reversed. What we have now are social insurance policies from above. This subverts the entire project of giving voice to the voiceless. India has paid a heavy price for failing to institutionalise social democracy It is generally agreed that theories of social democracy, in comparison to theories of formal political democracy, take cognisance of background inequalities that hamper the realisation of basic...