In its technology statement, Aadhaar, the massive Government of India project that seeks to enrol citizens, puts on record its commitment to using open technological standards. However, the government of Kerala — the only State that mandates the use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in governance — recently found that the client enrolment software used is only compatible with Windows, the proprietary operating system owned by Microsoft. The Unique...

A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other social sciences. Other social sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

Never mind wishful thinking by the government and RBI. Food will never be cheaper than what it is today. Not this year. Or in future. The reason is simple. Growing food in India has become extremely expensive. Crops are pricier even before they reach the market and face the pulls and tugs of rising local demand and exports. The farmer’s single biggest cost now is labour. Farm labour wages have doubled...

The case of the Food Security Bill gets curiouser and curiouser.  What started off as a fight between universalization and targeting has ended (or so it would seem) in a complete victory in the National Advisory Council, Government of India (NAC) for targeting through universalization (if such a thing was possible), with the honourable exception of Prof Jean Dreze, who has to be commended for his ‘note of disagreement’. On...

Denmark (Rank 1) Denmark along with two other countries have been ranked as the world's least corrupt countries. With a score of 9.3, Denmark has consistently topped the Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index. The country has a strong tradition of openness to global trade and investment, and transparent and efficient regulations are applied evenly in most cases. Denmark also boasts an efficient, independent judiciary that protects property rights, and the level of corruption is...