Media Reports The UID Aadhaar project planning and system design shortcomings and security risks at the national (or macro) level have been discussed elsewhere.1 The present article views the Aadhaar project at the system operational level, with practical considerations based on observed and probable functioning at the service delivery end. Consider the following report in a local daily, The Mysore Bugle: Food riots: PDS outlet vandalised Mysore: August 2, 2015—The PDS outlet in Ashokpuram...

A rural scientist, Mangal Singh, has received a patent for an innovation (Mangal Turbine) which can save billions of rupees worth diesel and electricity currently used up for irrigation. Despite the recognition of his work by eminent experts and officials, this scientist has been subjected to relentless harassment by a handful of bureaucrats. A recent evaluation of his work ordered by the Department of Rural Department has indicted these bureaucrats...

The acronym LPG has several expansions. It stands for liquefied petroleum gas. It stands for liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, a term of abuse used by those with Leftwing persuasions. It stands for life plundered by the government, sentiments associated with those who are against state intervention, but increasingly felt by the so-called middle class - however defined - because of price hikes, and proposed price hikes, for petroleum products. Ostensibly, price...

Nine villages with a combined population of 1,000 were out of the reach of the rescue effort in North Sikkim till this evening, injecting a fresh sense of urgency into a task force blasting past and working around boulders blocking roads in the region. The cut-off villages are located in Dzongu, the protected area of the Lepchas, the indigenous tribal community of Sikkim. The villages have been identified as Shipgyer, Bey,...

India has been ranked the fourth most dangerous country in the world for women, but the widespread practice of selectively aborting female foetuses may make it the most hostile to the female gender. In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, where the child sex ratio (0 - 6 years of age) has dropped to 886 girls per 1,000 boys - according to provisional data in the 2011 census - a strong civil...