Amid technical and infrastructural constraints, Maharashtra has rolled out 1.2 million Aadhaars, but the beneficiaries have been able to make little use of these numbers Ashok Bhil, a 25-year-old graduate from Navalpur, 7 Km from Tembhli, is disappointed with the way the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is rolling out Aadhaar in Maharashtra. Last September, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government chose Tembhli, a small village in the predominantly tribal Nandurbar...

Rising from ashes, Bihar is India's new phoenix. Recently it impressed the World Bank resulting in an aid worth several hundred crores for development of the state. And it has a number of lessons for neighbouring UP. In 2002-03, when Census data was notified, UP fared better than Bihar. But, now the tortoise (read Bihar) has metamorphosed to hare, leaving UP behind. Consider figures from the National Rural Health Mission. Number...

Later this week, the Registrar General of India (RGI) will unveil the first flush of its findings from the 15th Census. This once-in-a-decade effort is the seventh in independent India and is expected to showcase an entirely new set of vital statistics, consistent with the ongoing social and economic transformation of the country and something that should enthuse demographers and policy planners alike. Expectations are that the array of socio-economic data...

A pilot survey finding that 25-30% of the rural population can be automatically excluded from food security entitlements for below poverty line population might help forge a consensus between the government and the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council. The "automatic exclusion" criteria, devised on the basis of the N C Saxena report on methodology for a BPL Census, is more liberal than the "bare bones" approach adopted by the government in...

These are figures the Left Front should be wary of as it prepares to defend its citadel of 34 years in West Bengal. An analysis of data on the Muslim community released by the chief economist of the National Council of Applied Economic Research, Abu Saleh Sheriff, reveals that the state's minority has benefited little from development measures. In terms of human development indices, the Muslims have fared very poorly. Of the...