“…the Committee categorically convey their unacceptability of the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010…The Committee would, thus, urge the Government to reconsider and review the UID scheme.…” This was the conclusion of Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance (SCoF), which examined the Bill to convert the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) into a statutory authority. With this categorical rebuff, the SCoF dealt a body blow to the Aadhaar project, which...

-IBN   The much hyped Unique Identification (UID) project led by Nandan Nilekani has run into trouble after the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance rejecting the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010 in its present form. The committee headed by Yashwant Sinha pointed out several anomalies in the existing bill and urged the government to "reconsider and review the UID scheme as also the proposals contained in the Bill in all its...

Not allowing the dust to settle on the mismanagement of the Centre's flagship employment guarantee scheme in Uttar Pradesh, Sanjay Dixit, member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, on Sunday, alleged UP has violated the norms of the scheme. In a letter to Union minister for rural development, Jairam Ramesh, Dixit has drawn attention to an MIS report generated by UP, which indicates details of expenditure on works where there...

What is common between Brazil, Russia, India and China? That’s easy. They are the so-called BRIC countries. But, what is common between these BRIC countries and other emerging economies such as Indonesia, Argentina and South Africa? The answer: inequality. This disconcerting connect between these emerging economies is the focus of a report released last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the think tank for the club of...

Nearly 11 children go missing in India every hour and at least four of them are never found, according to a study by a child rights organisation. The report by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) covers 392 of India's 640 districts and is the first such comprehensive study on the subject. The data was compiled over two years from January 2008 to January 2010. The report says most of the missing children end up...