This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...

Smart card technology can be used to streamline India's unwieldy PDS. But it is yet to prove itself under real world challenges. Smart cards have become the latest buzzword to remedy India's public distribution system (PDS) — one of the largest food grain delivery networks in the world with more than 500,000 ‘ration' shops. Electronic voting machines have streamlined Indian elections. Credit cards, which can be swiped for payment at any...

Patients battling cancer, infections and mental illness joined a rally here today beseeching the government to reject a trade pact with the European Union that they fear will threaten the availability of inexpensive generic medicines in India. An estimated 2,000 people, many among them infected with HIV, walked along Delhi’s Parliament Street on a day when Indian and EU officials were negotiating a free trade agreement in Brussels. Health activists and lawyers...

NGOs fear several thousands left out ‘A mockery as enumerators insensitive' The census of the homeless in Delhi was completed on Tuesday with officials saying that they put in their best effort to count as many persons as possible, though some NGOs feared that several thousands were left out. Director of Census Operations (Delhi) Varsha Joshi said she along with other top officials had personally supervised the effort which began on the night...

United Nation Development Programme's India Urban Poverty Report, 2009 has pegged the number of slum dwellers in Uttar Pradesh at 44 lakh. The sample survey, which was conducted under the 58th round of the National Sample Survey Organisation, also suggests that UP is next only to Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, where 1.2 crore and 52 lakh urban poor are apparently living. The high numbers, however, it appears, are not the only...