-The Business Standard   Its guarantee of non-duplication can have far-reaching cost benefits but it has deep design flaws that can be compromised. PRAVEEN CHAKRAVARTY Former Volunteer, Financial Inclusion, UIDAI* “Aadhaar is an unadulterated identity programme that answers the question: Is the individual who he or she claims to be?”   The word “unique”, and not “identity”, is central to the unique identity programme or Aadhaar. It may be true that the vast majority of people possess some...

Is the majority of India veg or non-veg? Well, contrary to impression, the land of Gandhi and Buddha is predominantly non-veg. It may well have been majority vegetarian country at some point of time but the new trend is that more and more people are taking to non-vegetarian diets. A new policy paper, “Veg or Non-Veg? India at the Crossroads,” published by Brighter Green, a New York-based public policy action...

What was our immediate response to further decline in the child sex ratio in India? Within days of the provisional 2011 Census results (March-April 2011), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reconstituted the Central Supervisory Board for the Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex selection) Act 1994 , which had not met for 3 years, and on November 30, 2011 the Ministry of Women and Child Development...

The widespread outrage following the telecast of video footage of Jarawa men and women dancing for tourists is both heartening and disappointing. Heartening because the media made a rather unusual attempt to address the existential challenges of a people known to us as 'primitives' and disappointing because it failed to generate a nuanced debate. The 30-second TV slots accorded to 'experts' and stakeholders served to polarise opinion on the incident...

-The Times of India   Forseeing a bleak future for the country's children, an independent report said poverty was leading to malnutrition, stunted growth and high school dropout rates.  The 'Impact of Growth on Childhood Poverty in Andhra Pradesh' was conducted by NGO-Young Lives from 2002 and has collected data on 2,011 children aged between six to 18 months and 1,008 children aged between seven-and-half to eight-and-half years. Findings from its third round...