Smart card technology can be used to streamline India's unwieldy PDS. But it is yet to prove itself under real world challenges. Smart cards have become the latest buzzword to remedy India's public distribution system (PDS) — one of the largest food grain delivery networks in the world with more than 500,000 ‘ration' shops. Electronic voting machines have streamlined Indian elections. Credit cards, which can be swiped for payment at any...

Food inflation moved up to 11.49 per cent for the week ended February 12 as compared with 11.05 per cent for the previous week even as prices of certain items fell marginally. Despite the increase, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said while inflation has been a concern for the last 18 months, it will come down to 7 per cent by the end of the current fiscal. According to the Wholesale...

The Prime Minister-appointed Rangarajan Committee reviewing the draft food security bill has got its economics and logic wrong, a majority of members on the National Advisory Council has said as part of a draft report. Ready to take on the PMO, the council is nearing finalization of the report that will point out errors in the Rangarajan report and defend the NAC's food security bill. The rebuttal is bound to...

The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council (NAC) has pinned its hopes on the new food minister, K.V. Thomas, to see its version of the food security bill past Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The NAC’s perpetual grouse was that Thomas’ predecessor, Sharad Pawar, was not only indifferent but also opposed the idea of social inclusion in the food sector, and managed to convince the...

If the Unique Identity project is such a good thing why is the man heading it unable to answer simple questions about it? Since the publication of his doorstopper of a book Imagining India in 2009, Nandan Nilekani has done a superb job of reinventing himself. The former head of software giant Infosys Technologies was overnight cast in the role of a visionary with his unabashedly free market prescription to turn...