-The Hindu Business Line IOB, BoB and Canara Bank lead, finds study by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiatives   New Delhi: As the Finance Ministry and the central bank try to clean up the balance sheets of troubled public sector lenders, a new study has found that banks that saw a sharp rise in bad loans in 2014-15 were not very forthcoming with information requests by the public. While noting that there was “no positive...

-Outlook In the last two decades, more than 300,000 farmers have ended their lives. What can be done? Indian agriculture is important as it feeds an estimated 1.3 billion population of the country and is also burdened with the responsibility of providing livelihoods to 60 per cent of the people — 780 million people. No foreign country can produce this mammoth quantity of food and supply to India nor any sector...

-PTI The report noted 31% of multiple account holders (with a bank account in addition to PMJDY) are actively using alternate bank account. New Delhi: Duplication of accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) is on the rise while 28 per cent of accounts are lying dormant, says a survey by financial inclusion consulting firm MicroSave. According to the survey, conducted in 42 districts spread across 17 states and one union...

-The Hindu Women continue to face discrimination in terms of owning assets like land and payment of wages, accessing credit, technology, market and irrigation facilities Hyderabad: Such is the gender bias that even when her spouse commits suicide forced by agrarian crisis, the woman farmer is left to fend for herself. Even as they keep breaking the proveRBIal glass ceiling to move up the corporate ladder and make a mark virtually in every...

-The Indian Express Central allocations for agriculture are less important than the state budgets. I took the night train to Delhi to participate in budget-day discussions and my co-passenger, who boarded the train in ravaged Punjab, asked me a simple question: “50 farmers are committing suicide everyday; will the budget end farmer suicides?” My answer was — and still is — “No.” The Union budget is just the government’s bookkeeping exercise...