The microfinance bubble has burst. The AP government ordinance, the AP oppositionfs campaign asking borrowers not to repay and the sheer public hostility towards MFIs . all these have put the brakes on MFI activities for now. We need to rethink the role of MFIs in the rural economy . In order to do so, we must first grasp some of the myths on which the MFI sector has rested...

Two Adivasi student organisations today burnt the effigies of Assam water resources minister Prithvi Majhi, Lok Sabha MP Joseph Toppo and Rajya Sabha MP Silvius Condopan, all hailing from their community, in protest against the trio’s “silence” over the eviction drive at Ripu-Chirang reserve forest. The All Adivasi Students Association of Assam and the All Santhali Students Union alleged that the leaders were indifferent to the plight of the community. They...

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...

The recommendation of the National Advisory Council (NAC), that the proposed food security bill should include 75% of the population, is populist. The measure, if implemented, will entitle nearly 800 million people to some kind of subsidised food. It will drive a big hole in the budget, which finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has tried hard to rebuild after the spending excesses of 2007-09. This is not to say that the poor...

Every answer to question on Nitish Kumar's performance in the last five years as Bihar's chief minister begins with the phrase, ''Kam se kam itna toh kiya hai... (at the very least, he has done this...).''   By any index of growth and development, Nitish's five-year reign has unleashed no miracles. With 54.4% of its population under the Tendulkar Committee's revised poverty line, Bihar is India's poorest state and its health indicators...