Urbanization comes with its share of problems. Your new job lands you in a new city and you need necessities such as a mobile connection, a broadband connection or a bank account transfer as soon as possible. Your only hope in such cases till now is maybe a letter from the employer authenticating your address. Enter UID, the unique identity project headed by Nandan Nilekani, which promises to give an acceptable...
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UID and Public Health: Specious Claims by Mohan Rao
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...
More »Plug the hole in the bucket by Santosh Mehrotra
Thanks to the Right to Information Act, 2005, and also the activism of NGOs and of the media, a culture of accountability is growing in the country. That is the good news. However, the media, NGOs and RTI activists can only do so much. They can focus the attention of the public and parliamentarians on egregious scams, but rarely address the systemic flaws that result in leakage of funds. We have...
More »Hard questions about soft questions by P Sainath
There was in fact a successful auction of spectrum — only it was not conducted by the government but by its corporate sector cronies who made a fortune on the deal. On one pronouncement of his, you have to agree with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. His is not a ‘lame-duck government.' Cooked goose seems the more appropriate soubriquet. However, not a single new scam worth over Rs. 1 lakh crore has...
More »Scandalous Decision of Jairam Ramesh to Clear the POSCO Project
ENVIRONMENT MINISTER DISREGARDS FINDINGS OF HIS OWN REVIEW AND STATUTORY CLEARANCES COMMITTEES The following is the statement issued to the press by Abhay Sahoo, President of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), and Prashant Paikeay, the PPSS spokesperson, on January 31, 2010. The decision of Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh to give a comprehensive okay to the POSCO India Steel Power Production-Captive Port project, based on some additional conditions, is nothing short of...
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