The National Population Register and the Unique Identification Authority of India, which assigns Aadhar numbers, are at loggerheads with each unwilling to use the other’s data. The NPR has cited security concerns about the UAIDAI data since it has been using multiple registrars. The UAIDAI, in turn, has said the NPR needs first to complete a process of public scrutiny, which the latter says will take time. As a result, two camps...

The claim that the Unique Identification project will facilitate the delivery of basic health services is dishonest. AMONG the many reasons cited for India to proceed with the Unique Identification (UID) project – that it will facilitate delivery of basic services, that it will plug leakages in public expenditure, that it will speed up achievement of targets in social sector schemes, and so on – the most specious is perhaps the...

The commission has now directed RBI to furnish the information by 10 December to the applicant and publish it on its website by the month-end The Central Information Commission (CIC), which enforces the Right to Information Act, has directed the central bank to make public the names of the top 100 industrialists who have defaulted on loans taken from public sector banks. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had declined to disclose...

An independent study says some 250 thermal power projects that have got clearances may be meant just to grab land and water resources. THERE have been a growing number of headlines that speak of an energy crisis and the energy deficit in India in the last few years. The disparities in the demand-supply scenario, the increasing prospects of disruptions in the global supply of fuel and the consequent results of higher...

The annual report of the International Institute for Labour Studies projects a grim future for employment prospects. WITH the United States and much of Europe grappling with the slowdown in their economies and the resultant social unrest, the publication of the World of Work Report 2011: Making Markets Work for Jobs could not have come at a more opportune moment. Brought out by the International Institute for Labour Studies, which was...