-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The government will keep a record of all the services and benefits availed using the Aadhaar number for seven years, say new rules, prompting fears that the database could be used for surveillance. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues the 12-digit biometric identity to all Indian residents, will be required to preserve its record of verification of an Aadhaar number for the duration. “This is an...
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The End TB strategy -Soumya Swaminathan
-The Hindu The Global TB Report 2016, recently released, has revised the estimates for the tuberculosis (TB) burden in India upwards. The country has 27 per cent of the global burden of incident tuberculosis and 34 per cent of global TB deaths. For the year 2015, the updated estimate of incidence (new and relapse TB cases per year) is 2.8 million cases. India diagnosed and notified 1.7 million incident TB patients...
More »Towards a kerosene-free India -Abhishek Jain
-The Hindu With clean energy access a high priority for India, we must look beyond kerosene, ensuring alternatives After the success of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)/cooking gas, the government has now decided to launch DBT for kerosene (DBTK), starting with pilots in the State of Jharkhand. While the move is well-intentioned, it may not be simple to implement at scale, and may even fail to eliminate the...
More »India hunger levels ranked as "Serious" in 2016: Global Hunger Index -Rhythma Kaul
-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Hunger levels in developing countries may have fallen 29% since 2000, but India was still rated as a country with ‘serious’ hunger levels in the 2016, shows Global Hunger Index that was released on Tuesday. Despite improvements in hunger and nutrition over the years, India still has a long way to go before it is able to achieve the United Nations goal to end hunger by 2030 If hunger...
More »How's the economy really doing? -TCA Sharad Raghavan
-The Hindu There are multiple ways to arrive at an answer, but each metric points in a different direction. If someone asks you how the Indian economy is doing, how would you answer? Would you say that the Gross Domestic Product and Gross Value Added (GVA) are both above 7 per cent, and so the economy is growing strongly? Or would you say that the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) has contracted for two straight...
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