-Scroll.in Botched-up beneficiary lists have denied the needy the government rations to which they are legally entitled. Even though few in eastern Uttar Pradesh’s Baksha village have ever seen the internet, every man, woman and child there knows the word online. Online for them means standing in a queue outside a computer shop with a bundle of documents that the shopkeeper consults as he types away into the computer. At the end...

-The Times of India A striking feature of the poll campaign in Uttarakhand is that neither of the two major political parties have any concrete strategy for a crisis that's haunting nearly half the state's population. Since 2000, when the state was created, Foodgrain production has gone down by 6% and land under cultivation by 11%. In neighbouring Himachal Pradesh, with similar mountainous terrain, Foodgrain output increased by 29% while the country...

-The Indian Express They are the largest constituency in UP. Yet, all parties have overlooked their issues Next month, Uttar Pradesh (UP) will have a new popular government, hopefully with a clear mandate. If UP was a country, with a population reportedly of more than 214 million in 2015 (as per UN population projections), it would have been the fifth most populous country in the world after China, India, US and Indonesia....

-The Indian Express Linking of Aadhaar to a growing number of government entitlements is misguided LAST week the Union food ministry issued an unprecedented diktat. It has insisted that each family member must possess an Aadhaar number within four months, to be eligible for subsidised Foodgrains under the National Food Security Act. This ties in with the larger plan for all ration shops by 2019 to verify Aadhaar biometrics at every...

-The Indian Express Government could have undone the damage of demonetisation through the budget. The opportunity has been missed in deference to the whims of global finance. Since 97 per cent of the value of demonetised currency has returned to the banks, causing, contrary to the government’s expectations, very little extinction of currency, it is obvious that demonetisation has totally failed to achieve its purported objective of denting the black economy. It...