Minister slams Jairam for taking on facial recognition tool for Anganwadi benefits
NEW DELHI: The centre on Monday said the push to make facial recognition mandatory for Anganwadi beneficiaries is to use technology to ensure transparency and inclusion in welfare schemes.
Responding to sharp criticism from Congress leader Jairam Ramesh accusation that the centre's use of digital tools, like facial recognition technology (FRT), Aadhaar and biometric authentication exclude the poorest and most vulnerable from essential entitlements, like rations and maternity benefits, the Union Minister for Women and Child Development Annapurna Devi hit back, saying, 'it is absolutely wrong.'
In a post on X, Devi said, "Modi government is ensuring transparency and inclusion in welfare schemes through technology. Congress, on the other hand, only spreads lies and misinformation and obstructs effective implementation of our schemes."
To rebut the charge, the minister cited data to argue that technological interventions have expanded access, not reduced it.
'It is absolutely wrong to say that the use of technology has led to a drop in PMMVY (Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana) beneficiaries," she said.
She said first-time beneficiaries under PMMVY rose from 72.05 lakh in 2019-20 to 80.48 lakh in 2024-25 — the highest ever. In just the first quarter of 2025-26, over 27 lakh new beneficiaries have already been on-boarded.
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Indian Express
32 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Sudhir Mishra on rebellion being at the heart of his films: ‘Ours is the last generation to believe life's not only about loving your parents'
Your film 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi' (2005) had the Emergency as a backdrop as does your upcoming eight-part series 'Summer of '76'. How do you look back at the events of those days? Fifty years on, it's complicated when you look at it. You have to see that those who fought against it, what happened to them, were they very different from those they opposed? Of course, the imposition of the Emergency was, for want of a better word, a not-so-great chapter in Indian history. It gave permission to a lot of petty tyrants. There was a government and from the village-level up, there were tin-pot tyrants who ruled the roost. Anybody could arrest anyone, say he is a Naxal and shoot him. This is what caused the actual problem. What Mrs Gandhi and her people did not understand was that it was a 'conference of the upset' movement against the Emergency, against them. There was a whole disappointed generation. My series is about this moment. There was a generation that did not agree with the idea of India that was handed to them by their parents who had fought for freedom. They felt a sense of betrayal. Problem is those who rebelled didn't realise that those who took power after that were actually worse than those they were opposing. What is the 'Summer of '76' about? It draws from the autobiography of my maternal grandfather, DP Mishra, who had been in the Congress and had two stints as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. He was one of the few people who fought or manipulated — call it what you want — for Mrs Gandhi to be the prime minister. But he was a follower of Sardar Patel and was opposed to Nehru. He was the only one to resign from the Congress over Nehru but was brought back as chief minister, and then campaigned for Indira Gandhi. He was sort of a Centrist. However, a Left-wing fantasy had started that thought that through Mrs Gandhi, they could bring in a revolution. They became very disappointed during her imposition of the Emergency because of Sanjay Gandhi. He had started a coterie, which was non-democratic, entitled and had a 'Babalog view' of the world, which alienated the youth in non-metro India from the English-speaking upper class. My grandfather saw that there was a kind of undeclared emergency within the Congress and so before they could kick him out, he walked away. He had joined the Congress as a 20-year-old and was an understudy to Motilal Nehru, so he said he couldn't work under the great-grandson. As with your film Hazaaron…, will youth be at the centre of Summer of 76 too? Yes, but it's much wider. I follow people all over the country. 'Hazaaron…' is about these college students, 'Summer of '76' is about those who got involved in the JP movement. It's also about Ramesh Dixit, one of the students arrested in JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University), and on Pushpesh Pant's book, 'Portrait of a Student Activist'. So, factual parts of it come from there, then there are a lot of stories, fiction and imagination. The series is about what happens to the passionate, who think they are not living in the best of all possible worlds and want to change it. It's an exciting journey of seven young people and the problems they will face. The Emergency is a metaphor. This is a story of any time. It's a tribute to youth, to curiosity, to rebellion, to holding each other's hands, to taking risks. Rebellion is often at the heart of your films. At the time of the Emergency, I was very young but I know how my grandfather felt about it. He died in 1988 and I was a filmmaker by then. I'm not a faithful family boy, I have a point of view and everything's filtered through my eyes. I'm a scientist's son, a mathematician's son. So when I see a hypothesis, I need to evaluate if it's true or not. And if it's not, then I look at it straight in the face. We are, perhaps, the last generation that believes life is not only about loving your parents or obeying your parents. There were many rebellions happening at that time. Women were breaking free, landless peasants were attempting to break free, many lower castes were coming to the fore, claiming their place in India, the Dalit movement was gaining strength. This is what the Congress didn't see. Unfortunately, sometimes it ended up being led by the wrong people but that desire to break free was genuine. Your films have captured the angst and idealism of a generation. Do you think people are less idealistic now? I don't blame the youth because this is the world we gave them. The poor are bereft of one kind of nutrition; the upper class or the so-called middle class are bereft of another. The whole education system is geared to mugging up information and vomiting it out. It is not geared to create a mind which can analyse, understand and take things forward. Curiosity is not encouraged. So you have a nation of educated illiterates. You have prepared a world where anything can be said and the majority will believe it, which is why most of them will be replaced so easily by AI. There is extreme self-centeredness and a disrespect of any kind of idealism. It's not only that they do not want to be idealists but they disrespect them. And then there is a pseudo-Left, a cultural Left, which I think is the fig leaf of the Right. So there is actually no real opposition and everybody is the same. The censorship that started then, do you see its shadow in current times? Yes, a nation starts getting used to self-censoring. Anyway, it's not so difficult in our country because we always say, 'badon ke saamne aise nahi bolna chahiye' (you shouldn't speak like that before elders). We have a culture of censorship. Be polite, don't say this in front of your grandfather. If you have censorship in your head, then you cannot be scientific, right? Do you think there are still ways of saying what you want to say? Well, in Iran, filmmakers say what they want to say and make films. So, you can. If you have a negative mindset and say I cannot express myself, then what is the message you send to other people? You become a bore. You should keep expressing yourself in a rational, non-sensationalist way but you should be prepared for repercussions that may happen.
Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
Shy of a ‘sorry', Congress came to power again after Emergency, but never regained its authority
The blot of the internal Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi on January 25, 1975, has been borne by the Congress since – with its opponents often reminding it of the time when civil liberties were suspended, media throttled and the Opposition jailed. The present leadership of the Congress however, has only grudgingly expressed regret for the imposition of the Emergency. With the reins of the party again firmly in the hands of the Gandhi family, Congress leaders too largely avoid the subject, lest they tread on the wrong toes. The reluctance to speak on the issue, unless prodded, is in contrast to how the party has come to terms with its role in the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, with then Congress PM Manmohan Singh apologising for it in Parliament. After her party's, and her own, defeat in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections held after the Emergency, Mrs Gandhi did apologise, but not for her decision to impose it. She said she was sorry for the 'mistakes' and 'excesses' during the period, taking 'entire responsibility for the same'. Addressing a gathering at Yavatmal in Maharashtra in January 1978, she said she took responsibility even for those who were not willing to own up to their mistakes, and then went on to defend her action, saying the situation in the country was chaotic when she imposed the Emergency. The survival of the nation was under threat, and had things continued the same way, what had transpired in Bangladesh would have seen a repeat in India, Mrs Gandhi said. In 1971, Bangladesh had become a separate country after breaking away from Pakistan – incidentally with the help of the Indira Gandhi government. This has been the Congress line when it comes to the Emergency since then. Lately, it has tried to turn the tables by using the same word liberally against the ruling BJP, and alleging that the Narendra Modi government has pushed the country into a state of 'undeclared Emergency' since 2014. In a conversation in 2021 with Kaushik Basu, professor at Cornell University in the US, Rahul Gandhi said the Emergency imposed by Mrs Gandhi was a 'mistake' and 'wrong', but quickly added that the Congress had at no point attempted 'to capture the country's institutional framework' which, he said, was happening now. Over two decades ago, recounting her memories of the Emergency in conversation with senior journalist Shekhar Gupta on his Walk the Talk show for NDTV 24×7, Sonia Gandhi said that Mrs Gandhi 'did think (afterwards) that it was a mistake.' 'Well, my mother-in-law, after she lost the elections, she did herself say that… she had a rethink on that. And the very fact that she declared elections means that she had a rethink on the Emergency,' Sonia said on the show, telecast in May 2004. Asked whether this meant Mrs Gandhi saw it as a mistake, Sonia said: 'I think she did think that it was a mistake. Because don't forget that at least the Indira Gandhi I knew was a democrat at heart, to the core. And I think circumstances compelled her to take that action. But she was never quite at ease with it.' Sonia repeated this, adding that while the Emergency 'certainly' held a lesson that no government should go down that path again, 'those were different times'. Speaking to The Indian Express, Congress Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari referred to the situation prevailing after the creation of Bangladesh. 'A number of international forces which were inimical to India, essentially the Nixon-Kissinger duo and their outreach to China… a constellation of hostile forces were arrayed against India, because after the end of the Second World War, this was perhaps the first time that the map of a continent or a subcontinent had been changed by force.' Tewari said the Emergency had to be seen 'in this context'. Regretting that this 'has never really either been properly researched or documented or gone into', he said: 'This is not a justification for the Emergency. Mrs Gandhi herself had regretted the excesses during it. But the context and circumstances have never ever been fully evaluated.' Congress Working Committee member Tariq Anwar, who was among the party leaders who lost in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, also talked about seeing the Emergency as part of the bigger picture. Its imposition was not unconstitutional as there was a provision for it in the statute, he underlined. 'For instance, JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) was telling the Army, police and bureaucrats not to obey government orders… There was an attempt to create anarchy… Indira Gandhi had no other option.' Talking about those times, Anwar said: 'I remember Congressmen could not step out of their houses wearing the Gandhi cap. We could not put up Congress flags… Congressmen were attacked.' He was not saying that 'atrocities' were not committed during the Emergency, he added. 'In 1977, there was an anti-Congress wave. Indira herself lost. I lost too…. But within 28 months, the Opposition was trounced.' In 2011, the fifth volume of the Congress's history brought out to commemorate 125 years of the party, mentioned the Emergency. In the preface, the group who compiled the volume – headed by the late Pranab Mukherjee and including historians – said the party wanted experts to be involved in order to generate an 'objective and scholarly perspective for the period under review', and 'not necessarily have a party perspective'. In the article 'Indira Gandhi, an Overview' in the volume, columnist Inder Malhotra wrote: 'There is no question that the Emergency was a sordid chapter in independent India's history and a… nightmare for all those who lived through it… It took an excruciatingly long time to flush out of the body politic the Emergency had pumped into the system.' Malhotra added: 'Since all her confidants, especially her increasingly powerful son Sanjay, had ruled out her withdrawal from office 'even for a day' (after an Allahabad High Court order setting aside her election as MP), the hammer blow of the Emergency and Indira's monumental mistake had become inevitable… Sanjay and his cohorts had made elaborate preparations for the Emergency in total secrecy.' The Congress volume also carried an excerpt from the book JP Movement and the Emergency by historian Bipin Chandra, which called the 42nd amendment brought in by the Congress government during the Emergency an effort to change the basic structure of the Constitution. '… The most important changes were designed to strengthen the Executive at the cost of the Judiciary, and thus disturb the carefully crafted system of Constitutional checks and balances between the three organs of the government.' Chandra said the Emergency centralised and concentrated unlimited state and party power in the hands of the PM, to be exercised in an 'authoritarian manner' through a small coterie of politicians and bureaucrats. 'Having emasculated the Congress party and having no other organisation to rely upon, (Mrs) Gandhi, the Central and state governments depended almost entirely on bureaucracy and police both for routine administration of the 20-point programme and family planning programmes.' In his book The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years, Pranab Mukherjee, a long-time Congressman, described the Emergency as a misadventure. While there was no doubt that the period saw some changes like discipline in public life, a growing economy, controlled inflation, a reversed trade deficit for the first time, enhanced developmental expenditure and a crackdown on tax evasion and smuggling, Mukherjee said, the Emergency was 'an avoidable event'. 'Suspension of fundamental rights and political activity (including trade union activity), large-scale arrests of political leaders and activists, press censorship, and extending the life of legislatures by not conducting elections were some instances of the Emergency adversely affecting the interests of the people. The Congress and Indira Gandhi had to pay a heavy price for this misadventure,' wrote Mukherjee. 'It is believed that Siddhartha Shankar Ray played an important role in the decision to declare the Emergency; it was his suggestion, and Indira Gandhi acted on it. In fact, Indira Gandhi told me subsequently that she was not even aware of the Constitutional provisions allowing for the declaration of a state of Emergency on grounds of internal disturbance, particularly since a state of Emergency had already been proclaimed as a consequence of the Indo-Pak conflict in 1971,' Mukherjee, who later served as the President of India, wrote, going on to note Ray's powers as one of Mrs Gandhi's 'most influential advisors'. Given the collapse of the Janata Party government that replaced the Congress, and the Congress's swift return to power, party leaders believe the damage caused to the Congress was limited to the post-Emergency 1977 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress's overall vote share plunged to 34.52% in these polls, its lowest since Independence. The party won just 154 of the 542 seats, getting wiped out in the Hindi heartland, with the southern states (92 seats) accounting for 60% of its tally. But in the 1980 polls held after the Janata Party's fall, the Congress soared to 353 seats, with a vote share of 42.69%. Then came the 1984 elections, and the Congress, led by Rajiv Gandhi, won by a landslide, securing 404 of the 491 seats it contested in the sympathy wave in the wake of the assassination of Mrs Gandhi. Congress leaders see this as proof of the party having come out of the Emergency shadow. 'If Mrs Gandhi was a hated figure, the party would not have bounced back in 1980 and the country would not have mourned her death and given the Congress such a huge mandate in 1984, the only time a party has crossed 400 seats in Lok Sabha,' a Congress leader said. In 1985, the Congress added 10 more seats to its 404 tally when deferred Lok Sabha elections were held in Punjab and Assam. However, another leader, on the condition of anonymity, called the 1980 and 1984 results aberrations – reflecting the 'disaster' that was the Janata government experiment and the shock the country was in due to the first-ever assassination of a sitting PM. According to this leader, the impact of the Emergency, in both the disillusionment with the Congress and the opening of doors to the Opposition, set in after 1984. After that election, the Congress downslide in votes began, with the party governments founded in 1991, and from 2004-2014, being coalitions. In the 1989 and 1991 Lok Sabha polls, its vote share was 39.5% and 36.4%, respectively, and has since then never crossed the 30% mark. But the damage to the party went beyond numbers. The party whose leaders were crucial to the Independence struggle, to the fight for people's rights under British rule, would never be viewed the same way again.
India.com
an hour ago
- India.com
India's Social Security Coverage Leaps From 19% To 64.3% Of Population In Last 10 Years
New Delhi: India has recorded a phenomenal expansion of social security coverage from 19 per cent in 2015 to 64.3 per cent in 2025. This means that 64.3 per cent of India's population, comprising 94.3 crore people, are now covered under at least one social protection benefit. This unprecedented increase has also been acknowledged by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on its ILOSTAT database. This 45-percentage point jump over ten years marks one of the most significant expansions globally. In terms of the number of beneficiaries, India now ranks second in the world after China in providing social protection to citizens. The Ministry of Labour and Employment is working closely with the ILO for a national social protection data pooling exercise to obtain a holistic picture of social protection coverage in India. Under this project, encrypted Aadhaar is being used as a unique identifier across 34 major Central schemes such as MGNREGA, EPFO, ESIC, APY, and PM-POSHAN, to identify unique beneficiaries. Financial inclusion has been at the heart of India's social security push. As of June 18, 2025, over 55.64 crore people hold Jan Dhan accounts, giving them direct access to government benefits and formal banking services. The Aadhaar programme has helped create a unique digital identity system. As of June 27, 2025, over 142 crore Aadhaar cards have been issued. This system supports authentication and delivery of benefits to the right person at the right time. The DBT system has streamlined welfare payments, reducing leakages and delays. Cumulative savings have reached Rs 3.48 lakh crore as of March 2023, reflecting its efficiency and scale. More than 51.06 crore people enrolled in PM Suraksha Bima Yojna, 23.64 crore people in PM Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojna. Apart from this, over 51.35 lakh workers in PM Shram Yogi Mandhan Yojna and more than 3 crore women to be empowered as Lakhpati Didis, over 4 crore houses have also been allotted under PM Awas Yojna to uplift the poor, the official figures show. As per the ILO, social security is the protection that a society provides to individuals and families to ensure access to health care and to guarantee income security. It is especially important in times of old age, sickness, unemployment, disability, maternity, work injury or the loss of a breadwinner. Defined in ILO conventions and UN instruments, social security is recognised as a basic human right. India has a wide-ranging social security system comprising social insurance and social assistance schemes at both the central and state levels. These include welfare payments, mandatory social insurance with contributions from the employer and employee, and other employer-based benefits. In addition to these, there are also schemes providing in-kind benefits like food, health, shelter, security, etc. Phase I of this pooling exercise started on 19th March 2025 and includes ten states including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, and Gujarat. This data pooling exercise will not only strengthen India's global reputation as a social protection pioneer but also facilitate the Central government, states and UTs to optimise welfare spending and move closer towards sustainable financing of social protection. It will help the states in identifying unique beneficiaries under state-specific social protection schemes.
