It is getting harder for jobseekers to return to gainful employment and for new entrants to find adequate jobs, says the ILO. THERE is little in the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) annual projection of job growth to cheer about. The year 2012 has been described as a year of stark reality. A third of the global workforce is currently unemployed or poor; that is, 200 million members of the 3.3-billion-strong global...

The rural development ministry has mooted the idea of concurrent evaluation of welfare schemes. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has put forward a proposal to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, outlining the proposed concurrent evaluation network to improve the efficiency and quality of outcomes of all rural development schemes.  The government's annual budget for rural development comes second only to defence. In the current fiscal, the ministry's allocation (including spend on drinking...

1,727 persons have died during drug trials between 2007 and 2010, says public interest petition The Supreme Court of India has issued notices to the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh government in connection with clinical drug trials being conducted across India. This follows a public interest petition filed by an Indore based non-profit, seeking the court's intervention to put a stop to unethical clinical trials. Reports of unethical trials conducted on...

Like many board games that were developed in India, of which chess is perhaps the most important and famous, the game of “snakes and ladders” too emerged in this country a long time ago. With its balancing of snakes that pull you down and ladders that take you up, this game has been used again and again as a metaphor for life, telling us about our fortunes and misfortunes, and...

-The Business Standard   Its guarantee of non-duplication can have far-reaching cost benefits but it has deep design flaws that can be compromised. PRAVEEN CHAKRAVARTY Former Volunteer, Financial Inclusion, UIDAI* “Aadhaar is an unadulterated identity programme that answers the question: Is the individual who he or she claims to be?”   The word “unique”, and not “identity”, is central to the unique identity programme or Aadhaar. It may be true that the vast majority of people possess some...