As you read this, the Unique Identity (UID) programme is likely to have enrolled 200 million Indians. The UID, if it is allowed to, will eventually become the world's largest database of human biometric markers - fingerprints, photo and iris scans. It could go on to 400 million by the end of the year and 600 million by next year. What good is this? If you talk to opponents concerned with civil...

Pratham's seventh Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER) of rural India released on Monday tells a similar tale: rising enrolment but declining attendance, over-reliance on private tuitions, decline in reading and mathematical ability of children in the age group between six and 14. The report was released by HRD minister Kapil Sibal. Use of computer is also on the rise in upper prIMAry schools. Almost a third (30.8%) of upper prIMAry...

States turn to dubious technology for saving girl child With the country’s child sex ratio hitting an all-time low—944 girls for every 1,000 boys—states are turning to a monitoring device to fix the imbalance. Public health activists say the device, called Silent Observer, is more hogwash than an answer. Silent Observer can be fitted into sonography machines to allow the authorities to monitor and record pre-natal ultrasound scans taken by doctors. It...

-The Economist   A huge identity scheme promises to help India’s poor—and to serve as a model for other countries INDIA’S economy might be thriving, but many of its people are not. This week Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, said his compatriots should be ashamed that over two-fifths of their children are underfed. They should be outraged, too, at the infant mortality, illiteracy, lack of clean drinking water and countless other curses that...

Soon, radiologists can work in only two ultrasound facilities at the maximum, and that too within a single district. In a landmark decision to save the girl child, the Union health ministry in the Central Supervisory Board (CSB) meeting of the Pre-conception & Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, chaired by health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad cleared the proposal. The CSB also passed the recommendation that radiologists will have to clearly specify working...