-The Hindu The prohibition imposed on bicycle riding and use of non-motorised transport in 174 designated roads of Kolkata during most hours of the workday or round-the-clock is undemocratic, environmentally retrograde and out of sync with modern urban transport planning. At a time when global cities are thinking beyond the car and popularising shared bicycle systems, the law enforcement machinery in West Bengal's capital has chosen to go the opposite...

-The Business Standard The next catastrophe to hit UID will be on breach of privacy, which will happen sooner than later Tech czar and soon to be politician Nandan Nilekani joined Twitter last week and already has some 650 plus followers. The man shunned all forms of social media during the last four years as the chief of the unique identify (UID) or Aadhaar project. So this sudden change in strategy is...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Narendra Modi's government in Gujarat has countered the CAG's opinion that 66 per cent of children in the state are underweight and claimed that this figure has declined to less than 26 per cent in 2013 due to various steps taken by the state dispensation. "As a result of various nutrition interventions undertaken by government of Gujarat, the percentage of underweight children decreased from 73.04 per cent in March,...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court's Interim order defining Aadhaar from subsidies has left the Centre grappling with the future of the Unique Identification programme. It must now provide a clear roadmap to citizens and address their genuine concerns. Unique, universal, ubiquitous: three words that Mr Nandan Nilekani used to describe the ambitions of the UID project. Every person across the population of over 1.2 billion was to be uniquely identified. Every person...

-Down to Earth   This defies logic. Despite rapid economic growth, India has often been placed below sub-Saharan African countries that have very high number of malnourished children. But the government has no data to clarify its position. In the first week of September, Parliament’s Committee on Estimates criticised the government, saying: “The committee is surprised to note that in the modern era of Information and Technology, there is no recent official...