The Aadhaar universal ID has been rolled out to general applause and will soon change our lives across the board. The project should accomplish its mission, which is to improve the delivery of rural welfare. It may liberate the poor and marginalised from the Cash economy and give them access to formal finance and banking. And if the ID is made mandatory for big transactions, it may reduce money laundering...

Incessant rain and high tide with 8-metre-tall waves have flooded over 100 coastal villages in East Midnapore as well as Digha, affecting nearly 10,000 people and leaving thousands homeless. Over 500 mud huts have collapsed since last night, rendering over 2,000 people homeless. The villagers have been shifted to relief camps set up by panchayats in Shankarpur, Deshpran, Tajpur, Khejuri and Kendamari in Nandigram. The Hooghly flows into the Bay of...

Ample monsoon rains and higher prices of farm goods are likely to lift Indian fertiliser demand in 2010/11 by 13 percent to a record 60 million tonnes, testing local fertiliser makers' ability to raise output in sync with the demand, industry officials said. India's June-Sept monsoon rains, a key factor in determining food grain production and fertiliser demand in the country, were 2 percent above normal in the current year, weather office data showed....

An inter-ministerial panel will decide on the contentious issue of opening organised retail to foreign investment after examining stakeholder feedback to the discussion paper put out by the government. “A panel of six ministries was constituted on September 27, which will be chaired by Kewal Ram, senior economic advisor in the consumer affairs ministry,” a government official told ET. The committee will have representation from the department of industrial policy and promotion,...

The mountainous state-owned food stocks lying in the open and rotting in the rain are in stark conflict with a failing public distribution system , hunger, malnutrition and high food prices. The poor management of food stocks provoked the Supreme Court to transgress into executive domain when, on August 12, the court made certain directions like limiting procurement to covered warehousing capacity and distributing the rotting foodgrains free of cost...