Leading micro-lender SKS Microfinance today hinted that it could move the courts if the recent Andhra Pradesh notification prohibiting collection of loan repayments on a weekly basis is not withdrawn.The notification stipulated that the periodicity of repayment by self-help group (SGH) members to MFIs should not be less than a month, even under existing loan agreements.However, microfinance institutions operating in the state have railed against the move."In the event the...

Few will take very seriously the undertaking given by the government in the Supreme Court that River Ganga will be pure and free of pollution by 2020. Similar commitments were made to the public 25 years ago when, in 1985, the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) to clean this most treasured of the sub-continent’s rivers was launched. Even after spending several thousand crores of rupees on the project, the Ganga is...

Sample some data on the microfinance performance in India: According to the data provided by www.mixmarket.org, microfinance in India reached close to 270 lakh active borrowers in 2009, with the average loan size close to Rs 8,000. This translates into total borrowing to over Rs 20,000 crore. Though this number seems large, it represents only 0.3% of our GDP. Thus, large swathes of poor, both in our villages and urban...

OC's expenditure overshot its budget by Rs. 638 crore The OC has taken Rs. 2,307.82 crore in loan, well above the originally approved amount M.S. Gill admits that there were no earnings from advertisements as such The Commonwealth Games Organising Committee (OC) has fallen more than 80 per cent short of its revenue target, according to Union Sports Minister M.S. Gill. While the OC was expected to generate Rs. 1,708 crore, it only managed...

Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...