-The Hindu   The services will enable transfer, application procedures to be brought to one's door Last Christmas Eve, 35 people in a remote village of Jharkhand received a unique present. They became the first Indians to access their Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme bank accounts on their doorstep, having had their identities authenticated through their Aadhaar numbers. They are among the earliest beneficiaries of the next phase of the ambitious —...

-The Economic Times   Bureaucracy bashing is India's favourite national vocation. And for good reason. Our bureaucracy has its good share of crooks, criminals and cheats who need to be put away - with or without a Lokpal. The simple counter-question is, does the bureaucracy have a disproportionately larger share of crooks than in other professions in India, and the data clearly does not say a resounding yes.  In fact, there is perhaps...

-The Hindu To overcome the delay in payment of wages to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) workers in Jharkhand, allegedly owing to administrative apathy, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has piloted a project in Jharkhand. Under the project, online authentication and Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) in respect of MGNREGS was conducted in three blocks of three districts. First time in India For the first time in India,...

Four deadly cobras among 40 snakes unleashed by farmers in latest anti-corruption protest in northern India Two farmers fed up with bribery demands have dumped three sacks filled with snakes on the floor of a busy tax office in northern India. The 40 or so snakes of different sizes and species, including at least four deadly cobras, sent clerks and villagers climbing on to tables and scurrying out of the door to...

An unprecedented economic growth during the last decade has also seen increasing malnutrition, hunger and starvation amongst certain sections of society. India ranks 66 in the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO’s) World Hunger Index of 88 countries (Inter-national Food Policy Research Institute). More than 200 million people in this country are denied the right to food. One-third of all underweight children (57 million) in the world due to lack of...