-The Hindu The very foundation of Aadhaar must be reconsidered in the light of the privacy judgment Predictably enough, the recent Supreme Court order affirming that privacy is a fundamental right sent Aadhaar’s public-relations machine into damage control mode. After denying the right to privacy for years, the government promptly changed gear and welcomed the judgment. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), suddenly asserted, “The Aadhaar...

-Livemint.com A 2014 NSSO report shows that the majority of Indians prefer to consult private practitioners rather than public hospitals and those who do visit public hospitals often do so out of compulsion First it was Gorakhpur. Now it is Farrukhabad. The death toll in Uttar Pradesh’s government hospitals—from what appear to be preventable causes—has been mounting over the past month. Similar incidents have been reported from other states, pointing to the...

-Livemint.com A report by NEERI recommends that suitable rebate in tax or subsidies may be given to poultry farms to encourage owners to give up the present caged system New Delhi: Poultry owners should understand that animals raised for food too deserve to live free from cruelty, and so, layered battery-cage systems in India’s poultry industry should be replaced with cage-free housings in a phase-wise manner, according to a report by the...

-Scroll.in RTI documents show that Niti Aayog largely worked with World Bank and top private healthcare industry. The Niti Aayog’s blueprint to increase the role of private hospitals in treating non-communicable diseases in urban India by handing district hospitals over to the private sector on 30-year leases was built largely on a template provided by the World Bank. The template was fine-tuned in close coordination with top private healthcare industry representatives. State...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Inequality in India may be at its highest level since 1922, when the country's income tax law was conceived, with 22% income accruing to the top 1% income earners, a new paper released by economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel showed. "The top 1% of earners captured less than 21% of total income in the late 1930s, before dropping to 6% in early 1980s and rising...