Fingerprints, Eyescans, Photos Mandatory in All of India

A fingerprint scan, an eyescan, and a headshot photo are being taken for every Indian right now. The database started out as a voluntary program before becoming mandatory.

The "biometric identification program" called "AADHAR" now has 1.15b people in its database -- 99% of all Indian adults are documented.

Many Indians don't otherwise have birth certificates or other documentation. There is also a lot of fraud and theft related to identity (not just with crossing borders and regular crime, but also with the government's attempts to send money to assist the poor) in the country of many uneducated people.

Now in India every bank account and tax return must be linked to a person's biometric ID, and an AADHAR is required to receive any government benefits. According to the government, this is expected to save India around $11b per year.

The project cost the equivalent of $1.5b dollars, and was undertaken in the name of security as well as order, including monitoring border-crossers between Indian and Pakistan and Bangladesh.

There is criticism. Rights groups say the savings are not as great as the government claims, and fraud can still go on because a middle man whose role it is to confirm AADHAR and distribute government welfare can still deny resources or engage in corrupt behavior. There have already been leaks of personal data as well.

The country's supreme court has confirmed the right of the government to link AADHAR to social benefits and tax returns, but hasn't yet ruled on whether the state can force Indians to register without violating his right to privacy.

In India, Chocolate Consumption Is Growing Fast

Due to low cost, a belief the treats are healthy, and Indians' general liking for chocolate, sales of the food have grown rapidly in the past few years.

Sales grew by 13% last year, according to global market analysis agency Mintel, and the rapid growth is expected to continue to 2020. It's one of the fastest-growing markets. Mintel thinks it will hit Rs32,000 crore by 2020, up 160% from 2015.

The price for a chocolate bar is around 8 to 16 cents, and 2 in 5 Indians think sugary chocolates and cakes are healthy, according to Mintel.

India's 228,000 tonnes of consumed chocolate for the year is still well below the much less populated U.S. and U.K., which consumed around 1,300,000 and 600,000 respectively.

India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste - Gates

India, where 600,000 people die of water related illness each year (world total is 1.7 million), and where 1/4 of girls don't attend school because there is no proper toilet facilities, headway is being made in improved sanitation and risk education, according to Bill Gates, who blogged about the improvement this month.

The problem costs India an estimated $106b per year.

Two things cause most of the problem: access to proper toilet with waste treatment (to remove the pathogens that cause illness) in a country where most public spaces are used for defecation, and education about the necessity of using sanitary toilets, according to Gates.

In India, it is not feasible to build sewer systems and treatment facilities. For most toilets, one way or another water has to be carried to the toilet regularly. India is testing new toilet technology to find other ways of preventing disease.

As evidence of the progress Gates lauds, he points towards Clean India, the Indian government's campaign to clean up the country, which includes ambassadors and toilet-use monitoring, and the statistic the organisation reports that 63% of citizens now have access to proper sanitation, up from 42% in 2014, and that 30% of villages have been declared free of open defecation, up from 5% in 2015.