-The Times of India The national project to give unique identity numbers to all Indians, and enable welfare payments electronically, is now facing a snub from the very part of the government that funds it, and has been its most staunch supporter so far: The finance ministry. Two moves initiated by the banking division in the finance ministry over the past three months appear to duplicate and bypass the work being done...

RTE marks a welcome return to common schooling; the objections lack substance. It's the strangest of debates. Private schools are up in arms against the Supreme Court order upholding the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE), 2009. What are their objections? First, non-minority private unaided schools feel they have got a raw deal. They will have to provide free education to 25 per cent of their students, admitted from economically...

Remote controls are identified as technical devices which are used for various purposes ranging from the launching of space-ships to the monitoring of toy cars. But of late, these devices are being used to direct policies for nation states which are formally sovereign. We speak here of the powerful lobby of international credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's (S&P), which has just delivered its sermon that India is no longer...

The exploitation of migrant construction workers has grown alongside the expansion of the industry. It's time the government got serious about upholding the law. A recent report in The Hindu on the violation of labour laws at a massive construction site belonging to the Army Welfare Housing Organisation in Bangalore raises yet again the repeated neglect of regulations relating to the employment and welfare of workers by construction companies in India. For...

-The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called on India to lead the way in improving health services for women and children, stressing that addressing this issue is a crucial investment in the future of the South Asian nation. "Around the world, some eight million women and children die from preventable causes each year. Almost two million of them are Indian," Mr. Ban said in his remarks at a reception in support...