To banish hunger and malnutrition from the country, Parliament is likely to pass the National Food Security Bill (NFSB). In our earlier article on this issue, Can we Afford Rs 6-Lakh-Cr Food Subsidy Bill in 3 Yrs? (ET, December 17, 2011), we concentrated on the likely financial implication that we estimated at roughly Rs 6,00,000 crore over a period of three years. In this piece, we address the operational challenges...
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Online push for distance learning by Basant Kumar Mohanty
A government-appointed panel has suggested launching online higher education courses, a step experts said would not only widen access to knowledge but also check irregularities in distance learning. Apart from permission to universities and deemed universities to offer courses through the Internet, the committee has recommended that the government set up a Distance Education Council of India (DECI) as regulator. Fourteen open universities and 172 other institutions now offer distance education to...
More »Climate change: India's informal economy neglected
-PTI Experts from the University of Oxford and Indian researchers are looking into the impact of climate change policies on India's informal economy, and to diagnose ways of reducing CO2 emissions and improving jobs. By and large the global response to climate change has ignored informal economies and yet the larger part of India's economy and almost all its jobs are informal and not directly affected by government policy, a university release...
More »Setback to UID by Usha Ramanathan
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance finds the UID project to be “conceptualised with no clarity” and “directionless”. THE Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has dealt a body blow to the Unique Identification (UID) project. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was set up under the Planning Commission by an executive order on January 28, 2009. The scheme involves the collection of demographic and biometric information to issue ID numbers to...
More »Tracker controversy by TK Rajalakshmi
The use of tracker Technology to zero in on the misuse of diagnostic techniques for sex determination has evoked mixed reactions. ONE of the least discussed issues in the context of the data thrown up by Census 2011 is the worrisome decline in the child sex ratio (CSR) and the not-too-perfect implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, or PCPNDT Act. There is reason to...
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