-The Business Standard   Its guarantee of non-duplication can have far-reaching cost benefits but it has deep design flaws that can be compromised. PRAVEEN CHAKRAVARTY Former Volunteer, Financial Inclusion, UIDAI* “Aadhaar is an unadulterated identity programme that answers the question: Is the individual who he or she claims to be?”   The word “unique”, and not “identity”, is central to the unique identity programme or Aadhaar. It may be true that the vast majority of people possess some...

Poor workers are being paid wages as low as Rs 1-10 for a hard day's labour in states like Rajasthan and Karnataka under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which promises a real wage of Rs 100 per day.  Documents with TOI show that many desperate, poor labourers across the country are being cheated of their hard earned money and the much publicized guaranteed daily wage of Rs 100...

Questionable drug trials on mentally challenged persons by doctors in Indore emphasise the need for strict enforcement of medical ethics. IN what appears to be a page out of Robin Cook's medical thriller, government and private doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, reportedly carried out clinical trials of various medicines on some 233 patients who had gone to them seeking psychiatric treatment. As in Cook's famous book Coma, in which a medical...

Civil rights groups blame packaged food supplied to anganwadis  Close on the heels of the damning hunger and malnutrition (HUNGaMA) report, which found 42 per cent children below age five across India underweight and 59 per cent children stunted,  comes another report on the state of nutrition among children in Karnataka state. Over 1.2 million children in the state in the age group of 0-6 years are malnourished and underweight, says a...

-PTI   The International Labour Organisation (ILO) today warned there is an "urgent challenge" to create 600 million jobs over the world in the next decade as one in three workers worldwide are either unemployed or living in poverty.  According to the annual report on global employment by the ILO, the world faces the "urgent challenge" of creating 600 million productive jobs over the next decade in order to generate sustainable growth and...