Most discussions on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) have focused on one of few things, the leakages in the implementation of the scheme, the inadequate number of jobs created, and some even talk of how NREGA has resulted in food inflation going up in various districts as well as increasing mechanisation due to unavailability of farm labour. It is, of course, true that you can’t have food inflation...
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India set to meet UN 2015 poverty goal
In the fight against poverty, India seems to be winning - in some parts of the country at least. Vimla Sharma lives in Suwana Village in Rajasthan. Her life has been dramatically improved by a government scheme called the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Launched in 2005, it guarantees every rural family 100 days of work a year at a wage of 100 rupees a day. She can now send...
More »Banks may find it tough to ensure microfinance companies don’t charge high rates
Banks will have to put in place a mechanism to verify that microfinance institutes (MFI) they finance do not charge exorbitant rates to the final borrowers. The finance ministry has asked banks to ensure that MFIs, whom banks are financing, do not lend at rates more than 24% — all inclusive rates — to the ultimate borrowers. Some banks have recently inserted a clause while lending to MFIs that they...
More »RBI targets mobile banks to cover Rural India in 5 years by Vaibhav Aggarwal
Reserve Bank of India has set a projection of fove years by which mobile banks would be penetrating to every village of India, said KC Chakraborty, Deputy Governor of RBI. Chakraborty firmly said that in five years time every villager would be financially included. Mobile bank is a movable vehicle which reaches a particular region at a specified time. Every mobile bank is authorized by some bank and is operated by bank...
More »Hungry for action by Harsh Mander
India has long been simultaneously a country of enormous wealth and desperate poverty. In recent decades, the distance has only grown between those who enjoy living standards comparable to the finest in the world, and the millions left far behind. Even as Indians crowd the lists of the world’s richest dollar billionaires, an estimated 200 million people sleep hungry. Half our children are malnourished and nearly a fifth severely so....
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