-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...

On a wall on Station Road, among posters of Khoonkar Darinde and The Dirty Picture, Amitabh Bachchan looks out of a row of yellow-and-red posters and says, “Do boond har baar.” Here in Moradabad, the town in western Uttar Pradesh that till recently exported, besides its intricate brassware, strains of the deadly polio virus, the posters have been around for long. The writing on the wall was clear: this was...

India seems to have arrived at the threshold of polio eradication, but should it lower its guard? ON January 13, India achieved what had only two years ago seemed impossible in the immediate term. The country, which, given the epidemiological data in the new millennium, had come to be regarded by health experts around the world as one that would be the last to achieve freedom from polio (poliomyelitis), recorded no...

The region that consumes 50 per cent of the country’s pork is staring at an outbreak of classical swine flu and a host of other dreaded livestock diseases in the coming two months, experts have predicted. The project directorate on animal disease monitoring and surveillance, Bangalore, has warned that four livestock diseases, including haemorrhagic septicaemia, black quarter, foot-and-mouth disease and classical swine fever, will hit the Northeast in February-March. The directorate, which...

The Election Commission's crackdown on candidates using black money in electioneering has forced politicians to come up with innovative methods. Two ATM vans, belonging to two private banks, were seized with nearly Rs 13 crore cash in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh last week by Income Tax's flying squad, a part of which has remained unclaimed for the last four days. The EC has written to RBI to instruct the two large private...