-Financial Express ”This is the swamp of unconstitutionality, and unwisdom, into which the ECI and the voter will be cast if this linking proceeds as proposed. The linking of the voter database with the UID database must bewilder anyone who has watched the progression of the UID project. It has been plagued by exclusion, fraud, leakage, biometric failure, insuperable barriers to updating the information on the database, and ‘civil death’. Attempts to...

-Hindustan Times 2021 was supposed to be the year of the decadal census in India. This exercise has not been delayed even once until 2011 since 1881, when India conducted its first full census. Every day, the data and political economy team of the Hindustan Times brings you stories we call Number Theory. They are based on databases from India and sometimes even abroad. We will continue to do this in the...

-The Telegraph 'Retain the norm that excludes families owning five acres or more of agriculture land' A panel appointed by the central government to review the income cut-off for the Economically Weaker Sections quota after the Supreme Court questioned the existing figure favours retaining it at Rs 8 lakh, sources have said. The three-member committee’s report has been submitted to the apex court, with its contents yet to be made public. The sources...

-Down to Earth A breach in the dam could affect millions of lives and damage property Gandhi Sagar Dam on Chambal River in Madhya Pradesh is in need of immediate repair, warned a new report. It is one of the five water reservoirs of national importance.&NBSp; Absence of regular checks, non-functional instruments and choked drains are the major problems plaguing the dam for years, the report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of...

-The Hindu In the last few months, the industries have seen 30% to 40% fall in orders Coimbatore: Micro and small-scale enterprises here have appealed to the Central and State governments not to re-introduce restrictions even as COVID-19 cases rise in the country. Coimbatore District Small Industries Association president M.V. Ramesh Babu said the raw material prices have seen a slight drop and workers are available for the current level of orders. In...