The total number of family planning acceptors in the country has increased by 3.5 per cent between 2010 and 2011. Latest official statistics have shown that condom is the most preferred method of family planning while sterilisations the least adopted means. The comparative figures between April and September 2010 and 2011 put the number of couples adopting some method for family planning, including spacing methods, is close to 24 million, with at...

-The Economist   Opposition to the world’s biggest biometric identity scheme is growing FOR a country that fails to meet its most basic challenges—feeding the hungry, piping clean water, fixing roads—it seems incredible that India is rapidly building the world’s biggest, most advanced, biometric database of personal identities. Launched in 2010, under a genial ex-tycoon, Nandan Nilekani, the “unique identity” (UID) scheme is supposed to roll out trustworthy, unduplicated identity numbers based on...

The people are not always right - though they usually are. Socrates was sentenced to death in a direct democracy by popular vote in a popular jury. He was the greatest man Athens ever produced and was unquestionably one of the noblest men of all time. The Treaty of Versailles was a link in the chain of events that led to the decline of the great civilisation of Europe. Yet...

Maharashtra teeters on the brink while Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, two key states contributing significantly to grain production, have already declared a drought, potentially exacerbating agrarian distress and adversely impacting food prices. Supply of pulses, sugarcane, oilseeds, soyabean and coarse grain such as bajra and jowar, is likely to be hit, with production in the rabi season, or the winter harvest, set to decline between 25% and more than 40%, compared...

The Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka appears to be readying itself for a big fight, and this time it is over the Bhagavad Gita. A statement by Karnataka Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda, in which he said that the government was considering introducing the Gita in primary and secondary standards in school has drawn appreciation as well as flak in the state. Vicky Nanjappa reports. The issue had come up...