-The Economist   Opposition to the world’s biggest biometric identity scheme is growing FOR a country that fails to meet its most basic challenges—feeding the hungry, piping clean water, fixing roads—it seems incredible that India is rapidly building the world’s biggest, most advanced, biometric database of personal identities. Launched in 2010, under a genial ex-tycoon, Nandan Nilekani, the “unique identity” (UID) scheme is supposed to roll out trustworthy, unduplicated identity numbers based on...

A non-government assessment has ranked India third from the bottom among the world’s nine nuclear armed states in its ability to secure nuclear materials from Theft, with only Pakistan and North Korea with lower scores. The nuclear materials security index, released by the US-based non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative (NIT) yesterday, is described as “the first, public baseline assessment of the status of nuclear materials security conditions” worldwide. A panel of nuclear and...

-The Times of India   Even as the country continues to witness a campaign for a strong anti-corruption watchdog, a report has calculated that between $104 billion and $128 billion (roughly Rs 5 to 6 lakh crore) was illegally siphoned out of India in the decade spanning 2000 to 2009. This works out to an average outflow of about $10-13 billion (Rs 48,000 to Rs 63,000 crore) every year. The report has been prepared...

Maharashtra says it could go against existing franchisee norms Power distribution utilities of three States including Maharashtra have objected to the proposed suggestions by a sub-group of the Task Force on Private Participation in the Power Sector of the Planning Commission. They feel the proposals could go against existing franchisee norms in the States and skew the tariff. The sub-group had been pushing for Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) in the distribution of electricity as...

The Government is contemplating legal action against HSBC Bank for what is being described as the “active’’ role of their executives in persuading Indian account-holders to open accounts to park undeclared money in their branch in Geneva. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has sought the opinion of the Law Ministry for this and underlined that a similar course of action has been taken by other countries who, like India,...