This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...

Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan's visit to Jaitapur didn't cut any ice with locals protesting the 9900 MW nuclear power project planned there. Soon after, several people were arrested in a case of rioting filed in December, the arrest of Dr Milind Desai, a local protester who was stopped by industries minister Narayana Rane while slamming the government on stage has further incensed the situation. Activists now allege that the arrests are...

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been removed as the managing director of Grameen Bank, the organisation he founded in Bangladesh in 1983 to help the poor. The central bank has cited a rule that requires retirement at 60 to order the ouster of the 70-year-old “banker to the poor” who has been embroiled in a Norwegian funds scandal. Yunus had also fallen out with the political establishment after, fresh from the Nobel...

Assam has witnessed an alarming rise in patients suffering from glaucoma, a disease that causes permanent blindness. According to a conservative estimate, out of every 100 patients visiting the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology (RIO) here, nearly 10 suffer from glaucoma. Of the visually impaired in Assam, 10 per cent are victims of glaucoma compared to 5 per cent five years ago. RIO’s director C.K. Baruah told this correspondent that though many suffered...

Budgets are no longer statements of accounts or expenditure. In the contemporary context, they are to be seen more as a statement of intent, ambition, reform and politics of inclusion. If these are the parameters on which Budget 2011 is to be judged, it fails despite an implicit statement of intent. For a government which has been elected on the agenda of inclusion, even the statement of intent is not new....