Among the many reasons cited for India to proceed ahead with the Unique Identification (UID) project -that it will facilitate delivery of basic services, that it will plug leakages in public expenditure and that it will speed up achievement of targets in social sector schemes -   the most specious is perhaps the claim that it will help India reach her public health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Despite impressive economic growth in...

Even four years after the Sachar Committee Report revealed that Muslims were one of the most economically backward and socially disadvantaged communities, nothing much has been done to address the development deficits of this community. The Constitution of the republic of free India was crafted in troubled but idealistic times. The Indian people were still reeling from Partition bloodshed and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, in the dark shadows of politics...

The world's second largest national headcount operation, the Census of India, is significant for several reasons. The largest peace-time administrative activity of the Indian state is also the third since economic liberalisation was initiated. Three decades is enough time for a nation to assess the economic impact and implications of a change in macroeconomic policies, and hence Census 2011 should provide statistical insights into what the move away from state-led...

I was awakened early one morning recently by someone who said he was enormously enjoying my on-going debate on economic growth in India. I was very pleased that I had given someone some joy, but I also wondered what on earth he could be talking about, since I have not been involved in any such debate. As it happens, I am getting a steady stream of telephone calls and electronic...

There are many critics and sceptics with respect to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which came into being because of political pressure that managed to overcome quite strenuous opposition from some of the most influential policy making circles. It is likely that much of this criticism is not really because of the declared reasons, like fiscal costs (which are thus far very little) and potential leakage. Rather,...