Smart card technology can be used to streamline India's unwieldy PDS. But it is yet to prove itself under real world challenges. Smart cards have become the latest buzzword to remedy India's public distribution system (PDS) — one of the largest food grain delivery networks in the world with more than 500,000 ‘ration' shops. Electronic voting machines have streamlined Indian elections. Credit cards, which can be swiped for payment at any...

Hundreds of infants in Kenya received their first shots against pneumococcal disease today at a special United Nations-backed event to celebrate the global roll-out of vaccines targeting the world’s leading cause of child deaths – pneumonia. President Mwai Kibaki joined parents, health workers, ambassadors and donors in Nairobi to witness children being immunised as part of the Government’s formal introduction of pneumococcal vaccine in its routine immunisation programme for all children. Kenya...

As food prices rose for the seventh month in a row in January, contributing to recent popular unrest in the Middle East and a spike in commodities purchases by developing countries last week, some analysts are quick to make comparisons to the dry years of 2007-2008. But others warn against panic and oversimplified predictions of an impending food crisis, which contribute to price volatility. "It is important to underline – and we've...

There has been a gross simplification of the issues involved in the exposures in the Radia tapes on the lack of integrity among mediapersons. In order to understand how exactly journalists really function it is necessary to understand the overall context in which they operate and clarify some of the persistent myths about what the profession is all about. Four myths in particular need to be dissected: That it enjoins...

The world is a more corrupt place now than it was three years ago, a poll suggests.Some 56% of people interviewed by Transparency International said their country had become more corrupt.In Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq and India more than 50% of people said they had paid a bribe in the past year - many of them paying off the police.Meanwhile, a BBC poll suggests that corruption is the world's most talked...