The world's second largest national headcount operation, the Census of India, is significant for several reasons. The largest peace-time administrative activity of the Indian state is also the third since economic liberalisation was initiated. Three decades is enough time for a nation to assess the economic impact and implications of a change in macroeconomic policies, and hence Census 2011 should provide statistical insights into what the move away from state-led...

Thousands of children and women die every year in India due to lack of access to basic healthcare. Why is it that, in the Mecca of medical tourism, the poor continue to be denied the right to health? A national television channel had a 30-minute special recently on how private hospitals are denying free medical treatment to poor patients. Under a quota, private hospitals are expected to provide medical treatment...

If the Unique Identity project is such a good thing why is the man heading it unable to answer simple questions about it? Since the publication of his doorstopper of a book Imagining India in 2009, Nandan Nilekani has done a superb job of reinventing himself. The former head of software giant Infosys Technologies was overnight cast in the role of a visionary with his unabashedly free market prescription to turn...

Women in rural India continue to die because of indifference and neglect by healthcare authorities... This is a public health warning. Do not express concern for the state of healthcare in this country. Do not express anger that women die because they are either denied care or help is delayed when they have complicated pregnancies. Do not demand that healthcare is an entitlement that the poor have a right to demand...

Since 1947, successive governments have missed innumerable opportunities to put the country on the path of sustained, inclusive growth. Time and again, quixotic ideology has led to meaningless debates, antediluvian policy and inexplicable strangulation of capacity buildup in both physical and social infrastructure. Even today, while the gap between current and projected national demand and supply is well acknowledged, the government continues to drag its feet in creating the policy...