-The Hindu Technical glitches in the unique identification method make it unreliable in disbursing wages under the employment guarantee scheme   Within a few weeks of “Aadhaar-enabled” payments of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme wages being initiated in Jharkhand, earlier this year, glowing accounts of this experiment started appearing in the national media. Some of them also gave the impression, intentionally or otherwise, that this successful experiment covered most of Jharkhand....

-The Economic Times Heaps of dusty files continue to grow in government buildings and sensitive papers are mysteriously lost, leaked or dramatically reduced to ashes in fires while the six-year-old plan to modernise and digitise governance remains tied up in what it should eliminate - red tape. The latest casualty was the Union home ministry, where a fire was reported on Sunday, days after a blaze engulfed Mumbai's Mantralaya, killing people and...

-Down to Earth But public sector, too. needs quality improvement, say researchers from University of California What should cash strapped low- and middle-income countries do to improve access to health care? Should they strengthen the public health sector or the private sector? The question remains unresolved, but often funds are redirected from the public exchequer to the private health sector, even though, there is not enough data to guide policy. Recently, the...

-The Hindustan Times There is a widespread perception of policy paralysis in the corridors of power. The two remaining years of the UPA's term is still not too short to reverse the current drift, but time is rapidly running out. The damaged economy needs urgent fixing as does restoring the credibility of an executive racked by scandals and the absence of a sense of direction. The people of the country long...

-The Economic Times Imagine a rural family of five. Mom. Dad. Two kids. And Grandma. Assume too that they are below the poverty line. The day is coming when this family will have to give its biometrics out to myriad agencies.  You know that Nandan Nilekani's Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or the Registrar General's National Population Register (NPR) has been collecting biometrics for a while now.  But a set of other...