-The Indian Express Aadhaar doesn’t empower people, only the state Ironically, in the week that the UIDAI revealed its draconian face, serving a legal notice to those who exposed flaws in the Aadhaar eco-system, Ajay Pandey (CEO, UIDAI), wrote, “The critics tend to forget that Aadhaar empowers the people, not the state” (‘Criticisms Without Aadhaar’, IE, May 13). However, government data reveals that Pandey is wrong to believe that “Aadhaar empowers...

-The Indian Express As the Modi government completes three years, here are three potentially game-changing steps it could now take to harness the sector’s unrealised potential Amidst the predictable tidal wave of opinion pieces to mark the Narendra Modi government’s third anniversary, one little event last week squeezed its way into the inside pages of a few newspapers. This was a call for a “farm strike” in Maharashtra from June 1,...

-Frontline Low prices following a bumper crop and the State government’s inability to procure much of the yield leave tur farmers in Maharashtra in a quandary. DROUGHT or abundance, farmers seem to be perpetually doomed in Maharashtra. The most recent crisis unfolding in the agrarian segment is the crashing prices of pulses, particularly tur dal, and the inability of the State government to procure the entire crop. Adding to the problem...

-PTI NEW DELHI: In the next two years, the government today said it will focus on nutritional security of the country's two-third poor population registered with the public distribution system (PDS) under the food law. The food law aims to provide legal entitlement of 5 kg subsidised foodgrains per person every month at Rs 1-3/kg to 23.3 crore registered members. The law was passed by Parliament in September 2013, during the previous...

-The Hindu Scope for the middlemen has increased, says IIT professor Reetika Khera In Bandaveedhi village in Paderu in Visakhapatnam agency, 400 residents had gone without the basic food items from the public distribution system (PDS) in April, as the officer concerned had a marriage at home and had no time to switch on the biometric Machine that would record the finger prints of the beneficiaries. In Kasimkota, Padma, 70, was sent...