-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...

School girls in bright red uniforms troop down the slope in groups of threes and fours in Koppa, the fertile sugarcane town in southern Karnataka’s agricultural district of Mandya. A teenage boy on a motorcycle does the dim-and-dip with his headlights, the equivalent of a wink, as he passes the girls on his way up the slope in what seems to be a strut on a motorcycle. “Television and mobile phones...

On a wall on Station Road, among posters of Khoonkar Darinde and The Dirty Picture, Amitabh Bachchan looks out of a row of yellow-and-red posters and says, “Do boond har baar.” Here in Moradabad, the town in western Uttar Pradesh that till recently exported, besides its intricate brassware, strains of the deadly polio virus, the posters have been around for long. The writing on the wall was clear: this was...

Here is a fundamental question to friends and supporters of Salman Rushdie: Is the right to speech and expression absolute, without any restrictions, in any democratic society? The right to freedom of expression is recognised as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 goes on to say that the exercise of this right carries “special duties and responsibilities” and may “therefore be...

-The Indian Express   Salman Rushdie on Thursday got support from Vikram Seth, who said the controversy at the Jaipur Literature Festival was “because of power, politics and misuse of religion”. Speaking at the first Kolkata Literary Meet, organised as a part of the 36th Kolkata Book Fair, Seth said it was ironic that an event just a few days before the Republic Day went on to prove that everything it celebrates about...