-The Hindu     To be able to deliver appropriate legal services to the rural and tribal communities, we need an alternative delivery system with a different model of legal service providers Delivery of legal services to the rich and the corporate class is organised not through individual lawyers but through a series of networked law firms. These firms employ hundreds of lawyers and domain experts all over the country to provide highly specialised...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The United Progressive Alliance government has drawn up a Rs 75,000-crore action plan that seeks to provide self-employment opportunities to seven crore households in rural India over the next 10 years. The programme, which intends to impart training to rural households for semi-skilled and skilled jobs, may help UPA garner some extra votes in the general elections due next year. "The model has already been tested in...

-The Hindu To the long list of 28 public sector banks in India, one more was added with the inauguration of the Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) on Tuesday by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The bank is unique in more ways than one. It will focus predominantly on women, apart from being staffed largely by them. To the BMB will go the distinction of being the first-ever public sector bank to...

-The Indian Express For several decades now, the Indian government and a variety of donor agencies have promoted and implemented "livelihoods projects". These projects depend upon women's self-help groups, or SHGs, to raise living standards - particularly of the 25 crore rural poor. In 2011, the Indian government launched the Rs 38,000 crore National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), also known as Ajeevika (reportedly now being merged with the Mahatma Gandhi National...

-Review of Agrarian Studies This paper ar­gues that mech­a­ni­sa­tion of In­dian agri­cul­ture, as mea­sured by growth in the pro­duc­tion and sale of trac­tors, has con­tin­ued, al­though not uni­formly, over the last two decades. While the last two decades were a pe­riod of slow­down in agri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion, the data do not sup­port a view of un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated eco­nomic de­cline in rural areas. Our focus on trac­tors is jus­ti­fied as the In­dian agri­cul­tural sec­tor...