-Scroll.in Instead of wages for a short period of time, the family running the project in Lanka village will create an asset for life. Mahavir Parhaiya’s household in the remote village of Lanka in Latehar district of Jharkhand is bustling with activity. They are busy working on setting up a mango plantation on what was once a barren plot near their house, under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...

-Frontline.in The Aadhaar project’s headlong push towards “total” enrolment of Indian citizens threatens the privacy of individuals on an unprecedented scale, while its patchy biometric system acts as a tool of denial for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the UID chugs along, regardless, fuelled by the avarice of private interests who seek to cash in on citizen data. IN the last seven years, the right to privacy of Indian citizens has been...

-Business Standard Not only is your privacy stripped stark naked, the system itself is illegal and vulnerable Indians have serious red tape PTSD. We live with chronic anxiety about the documents that get us the entitlements and paid services we need — food, cooking gas, SIM cards, sale deeds, passports and so on. We’re so tyrannised by bureaucracy that when we hear of an official document that might simplify life, we fall...

-The Indian Express Supreme Court must urgently hear and settle issues of privacy and exclusion raised in the context of the UID project Coercion, illegality, contempt of court and exclusion have become characteristics by which people recognise the UID project. It started with its use in PDS and LPG, but, by now, has spread like a contagion to all manner of databases. In just the last 20 days, the government has...

-The Indian Express The rights-based approach departs from the ‘assurance-based approach’ of the new National Health Policy, which essentially perpetuates the status quo, explains The Indian Express. Since the time the Mental Health Bill was introduced in Rajya Sabha in 2013, decriminalisation of suicide has been its calling card. However, the legislation travels beyond just that colonial era relic, assuming a rights-based approach to mental healthcare, and creating circumstances for removal of...