Centre to notify revised poverty estimates to States soon The Union government will soon notify the revised poverty estimates on the basis of which States can undertake proper identification of beneficiaries under the public distribution system (PDS). This will include a massive exercise to include eligible beneficiaries and weed out the ineligible ones through use of biometric technology, which will replace the manual system of identification. Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh...

Activist Gopal Krishna makes a case that the Unique Identification Number project is a gross violation of fundamental human rights and points out that a similar project/law in Britain is going to be repealed. This is with reference to a privacy invasion project which is relevant to India and all the democratic countries of the world. The very first bill that is to be presented by the UK's new coalition...

The glitter of growth has added little sparkle to the lives of many peasants and rural workers. Deprivation, discrimination, and disadvantage dominate the everyday lives of large sections in rural Andhra Pradesh, an important new study*finds.  Village studies highlight features of society that are often overlooked and overshadowed by macro-studies of the economy. A recent study presents extraordinarily rich, unusually detailed and intensely disturbing data on agrarian relations, livelihoods, economic...

RAJINDER SACHAR is one of India’s renowned civil rights activists. A former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Sachar has done pioneering work in enabling a legal framework to assist hundreds who stand accused by the police across India for waging war against the State, many of them with little or dubious evidence. Though 87 years old, Sachar continues to work tirelessly with one of India’s key rights groups,...

A new study on nutritional challenges has painted a grim picture of the current Indian scenario where over 50% of child deaths are caused due to malnutrition. Concerned over the high number of child deaths, the ministry of women and child development (WCD) plans to strengthen nutritional surveillance by mapping undernourished endemic zones and identifying "high risk and vulnerable districts". The report recommends developing a nutrition surveillance system to identify...