Lack of adequate credit - the lifeblood for any company is threatening to derail fledgling attempts by hundreds of dalit entrepreneurs to overcome deep socio-economic barriers and break into mainstream business.  Without credit, such entrepreneurs would also struggle to cash-in on the Rs 7,000-crore business opportunity opened up by the central government's new dalit-friendly sourcing plan, unveiled last month.  Credit disbursements to dalit entrepreneurs through 20-odd schemes run by the Ministry of...

Leaders of farmer groups are meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday to press for allowing FDI in retail. Leaders from four states with lion's share in India's farm GDP--Punjab, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka -- will be part of the delegation.  "We will give December 31 as deadline for implementation of FDI. After that we will begin a nationwide stir," said PV Chengal Reddy, who heads Confederation of Indian Farmers, a...

-The Telegraph   The main points agreed upon in the Durban talks: Kyoto protocol extension After the failure of Copenhagen in 2009 to come up with a new, internationally-binding deal and only incremental progress a year later in Cancun, a partial legal vacuum had loomed as drafting a new UN treaty is extremely time-consuming. Sunday’s deal extends Kyoto, whose first phase of emissions cuts run from 2008 to the end of 2012. The second commitment...

One hopes that the hotly contested Lokpal Bill will reach its final denouement during the winter session of Parliament. In fact, the debate on corruption in Parliament and media has focused on the single demand for the establishment of an omnipotent institution of the lokpal with its powers of enforcing the citizen’s charter, establishing state-level lokayuktas and encompassing the bureaucracy from a peon to head of the department. It has...

The Bihar directorate of economics and statistics (DES), a subsidiary wing of the state's planning and development department (PDD), is mulling over using the 'kinnar' community (eunuchs) as informants for timely feedback on birth of new children in families of any locality, so that their registration could be done within the stipulated time. The efficacy of eunuchs as effective informants was discussed at a state-level workshop on "Civil registration system" held...