-The Telegraph New Delhi: Two finance ministry departments, the Election Commission and the Reserve Bank have no information on the consultations over electoral bonds the Centre introduced nine months ago and touted as a "game-changing" decision to clean up political funding, an RTI query has revealed. RTI activist Venkatesh Nayak had sought from the department of economic affairs (DEA), a wing of the finance ministry, details of the number of representations it...

-Down to Earth Jean Dreze on why he prefers a solidarity society, rather than a welfare state * Are you actually an advocate of the welfare state? Ideally, I would prefer to think in terms of a solidarity society rather than welfare state, for two reasons. First, private non-profit institutions can play a very useful role in the social sector. In many countries, some of the best schools and health centres are run...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Most households covered by government-funded health insurance have to use personal funds to pay for hospitalisation, a study has suggested, iterating concerns about the wisdom of deploying public-funded insurance schemes to seek universal health coverage in India. The study, designed to determine how well government-funded health insurance protects households from health expenditure, has found that 66 per cent of such households who sought healthcare in public hospitals and...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said on Monday that Aadhaar data is completely safe and secure. Aadhaar number, it said, is not a secret number and it is to be shared with authorised agencies if one wishes to avail a certain service or benefit of government welfare schemes or other services. "Aadhaar data is fully safe and secure and there has been no data leak or breach at...

-PTI NEW DELHI: More than 200 central and state government websites publicly displayed details such as names and addresses of some Aadhaar beneficiaries, the Unique Identification Authority of India has said. The Aadhaar issuing body added, in response to an RTI query, that it took note of the breach and got the data removed from those websites. It did not specify when the breach took place. It said Aadhaar details have never been made...