The government appears to be working towards an amicable solution on the question of who can collect biometric information data for the Indian population. There has been disagreement about whether this will be done by the UIDAI headed by Nandan Nilekani, or the National Population Register headed by Home Minister P. Chidambaram. It now seems that both may continue to collect data but share its use. When any country sets about...

-IBN Manipur will on Saturday elect a new 60-member assembly to mark the start of make-or-break elections in five states. The staggered exercise, which ends with the vote in Goa and Uttar Pradesh on March 3, will be this year's first major test for political parties. Along with Uttarakhand and Punjab, a grand total of 137 million voters will be eligible to exercise their franchise in the five states. Earlier, campaigning for...

Poverty is concentrated in the informal sectors of the Indian economy, with people in these occupations amongst the worst affected from the pernicious Licence Quota Raid Raj. This is illustrated by the sarkari controls that trap the livelihoods of some of our nano entrepreneurs - cycle-rickshaw owners and pullers - in a web of illegality. Cycle-rickshaws are an inexpensive mode of commute in many cities, and do not cause any...

-CNN-IBN   Contrary to the dominant narrative that areas where Naxalites are strong are where the state has been absent, for the last 100-150 years, there has been a gradual expansion of the state in tribal areas regardless of whether the people want it or not. However, the state has been expanding in the wrong areas. You have an extension of the forest department, the bureaucracy, the patwari and the forest guard....

Activists fear that the government’s move to exempt the CBI from the Right to Information Act could have ulterior motives Kiran Bedi is convinced that the UPA government’s reluctance to give the proposed citizen’s ombudsman, the Lokpal, control of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country’s premier investigation agency, is due to skeletons that lie buried deep in the agency’s cupboards.   The day Parliament was to discuss the Lokpal Bill,...