When India embarked on its “unique ID” project in the fall of 2010, pledging to distribute unique 12-digit numbers to 1.2 billion people, the hope was that hundreds of millions of Indians who don’t have a passport, driver’s license or other credible identity document would get one – and with it, a ticket to essential government and private sector services. A new survey led by Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Microfinance institutions escape charge of abetting suicide of clients-M Suchitra
In 2010, Andhra Pradesh witnessed a series of suicides. These were not cases of farmers' suicides—a regular occurrence in the state which continues to be in the grip of an agrarian crisis. The victims in these cases happened to be the poorest of the poor; most of them illiterate dalits and adivasis. The first information reports (FIRs) of the police reveal that most of the suicides were due to coercive...
More »Starving in India: It Isn’t All About Food-Ashwin Parulkar
HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...
More »Delete the errors to save the census by Swati Narayan
Unless data gathering for the Socio Economic and Caste Census is refined, the exercise could cast out the real claimants. Have the census enumerators recently knocked on your door with swanky tablet computers in hand? If they have, it's because they have begun to go door-to-door in most States to complete the final phase of the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC). This mammoth exercise is being coordinated by more than...
More »Ex-sarpanch gets life for killing RTI activist's kin by Bhaskar Mukherjee
FATEHABAD: An additional district and sessions court on Monday handed down life imprisonment to a former sarpanch of Chandrawal village, who allegedly mowed down daughter-in-law of a whistleblower RTI activist. Announcing the life sentence, additional district and sessions judge (ADJ) L N Jindal also slapped a fine of Rs 6,000 each on former sarpanch Dharambir Malik and driver Satbir Singh. Two whistleblowers Jagdish Kumar and Phool Singh of Chandrawal had sought information...
More »