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...

‘Break the nexus between builders and politicians' 'Land being grabbed from poor through malpractices' Social activist Medha Patkar and over 50 others were detained for some time by the police here on Tuesday after they barged into the Adarsh housing society and staged a protest, demanding the demolition of the building and the scrapping of Rule 3K under the Maharashtra Slum Act. “Adarsh is the symbol of their paradigm of development. They don't...

Administration trying to make the land encroachment-free Several slum-dwellers were injured in a clash with the police while trying to foil a bid to remove their jhuggis at Narayani Basti, 1 km from the State Secretariat here, on Saturday. Resentment has been brewing among inhabitants of Narayani Basti for long with the administration trying to make the land encroachment-free. Slum Dwellers assembled to impede work by the demolition squad comprising officials from...

Fast-growing emerging nations are taking increasingly aggressive actions to beat back rising food prices as they grow more worried of threats to stability if prices don't start to retreat. Developing-market governments have unveiled a laundry list of measures—including price caps, export bans and rules to counter commodity speculation—to keep food costs from disrupting their economies as price spikes that some had hoped were temporary have stretched into the new year. Some...

In an effort to stem the tide of corruption and keep the builder lobby "on a tight leash", a number of checks and guards have been introduced in the new coastal zone regulations. But the one that is likely to cause much consternation among developers is the Centre's insistence that private companies undertaking any redevelopment of koliwadas (fishing villages) within 100 m of the coastline will come under the purview...