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[E]ntrenched class interests and social inequalities rooted in religion, caste, and gender have made the transition slow and uncertain.

On 28 January 2009, the Government of India constituted the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) through a Gazette notification. The main aim was to "generate and assign UID to residents", where UID refers to "Unique Identity". The brand name "Aadhaar" (meaning "foundation" in some Indian languages) and a logo followed. The Aadhaar project came to be seen as one of the flagship schemes of the second United Progressive Alliance (UPA-2) government (2009-2014).

The Aadhaar project which aims to provide all residents in India with a unique identity number requires much more attention from sociologists of India. There are several areas of research where sociologists can help: one, the implications of new technologies of surveillance for (a) privacy and (b) society; two, the repercussions of the desire for social ordering and control and technocratic solutionism for people in their interactions with the state demands fuller sociological study. This brief note attempts to outline some of the issues that call out for enquiry.

This study presents an analysis of inter‐district variations in murder rates in India in 1981. Three significant patterns emerge. First, murder rates in India bear no significant relation with urbanization or poverty. Second, there is a negative association between literacy and criminal violence. Third, murder rates in India are highly correlated with the female‐male ratio in the population: districts with higher female‐male ratios have lower murder rates. Alternative hypotheses about the causal relationships underlying this connection between sex ratios and murder rates are scrutinized. One plausible explanation is that low female‐male ratios and high murder rates are joint symptoms of a patriarchal environment. This study also suggests that gender relations, in general, have a crucial bearing on criminal violence.

In recent years in India, minimum support price (MSP) and government procurement, especially of paddy and wheat, have been discussed widely, but these discussions have often drawn on evidence that is dated and incomplete. Consequently, such discussions have clouded the facts, resulting in a large number of factoids. According to these popular misconceptions, very few farmers (6 per cent only) benefit from MSP and government procurement, only large farmers benefit, and only farmers of Punjab and Haryana (and, to some extent, western Uttar Pradesh) benefit. In this article, we examine these three factoids and draw on multiple data sources to distil the facts. We argue that the existing evidence suggests a more complex picture: (1) MSP impacts 13 per cent of paddy sellers and 16 per cent of wheat sellers; (2) the geographies of procurement have expanded to new States including, notably, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha; and (3) although at the national level there is a bias towards large farmers, this does not imply exclusion of small and marginal farmers. In fact, a majority of the beneficiaries are marginal and small farmers on both the extensive and the intensive margins. Further, we find substantial heterogeneity by States. Haryana, for instance, has a bias in favour of small and marginal farmers. We conclude that debates on MSP and procurement must therefore take into account the changed geography of procurement and the profile of sellers, and recognise the diversity of experiences relating to procurement across States. ; PR ; IFPRI3; 3 Building Inclusive and Efficient Markets, Trade Systems, and Food Industry; 5 Strengthening Institutions and Governance; DCA ; SAR