-The Business Standard Reetika Khera Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi* “Aadhaar is being made de facto compulsory for welfare schemes. With two-thirds without Aadhaar, they are bound to be denied entitlements” There are three components of the government’s direct benefit transfer scheme — computerisation, extending banking services and linking the benefits with Aadhaar. The real game-changers are the first two, whereas Aadhaar-enabled transfers carry the risk of excluding current beneficiaries. The Central government has...

-The Hindu A mix of social constraints and dearth of employment opportunities has kept women out of the labour market, leading to a huge opportunity cost to the nation Women in India face enormous challenges for their participation in the economy — in a way that mirrors the many injustices they suffer in the society at large. The labour participation rate of women — that is, the number of women in the...

-PTI MELBOURNE: Internet and other components of information communication and Technology (ICT) industry annually produces more than 830 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, and is expected to double by 2020, a new study has found. Researchers from the Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) and Bell Labs explain that the information communications and Technology (ICT) industry, which delivers Internet, video, voice and other cloud services, produces about 2...

-The Times of India National Advisory Council (NAC) member and MKSS leader Aruna Roy on Friday shot off a scathing letter to the finance ministry objecting to "talk" of subsidy cuts for the poor while funding programmes like Aadhar that have no legislative backing. She also suggested that pre-budget consultations for business and social sector should be held jointly in a more democratic fashion. Expressing "shock" at subsidy cuts Roy, who did...

-The Hindu When a political party puts up candidates with criminal charges, it results in the alienation of large sections of people from the political class and politics itself When the Election Commission of India turned 60 on January 25, 2010, The Hindu opened its lead editorial of January 29 with the words, “After overseeing 15 General Elections to the Lok Sabha, the ECI, in its diamond jubilee year, can with justifiable...