At BANCON (annual bankers' conference) 2011 in Chennai, financial institutions explored avenues for greater participation in agriculture and rural development. There are a few areas in need of additional attention and investment. Green Revolution technologies are scale-neutral but not resource-neutral. Inputs are needed for output; therefore market-purchased inputs become important in providing soil and plant healthcare for higher yields. Social scientists point out that small and marginal farmers will be excluded...

In a remote Indian village in the Western state of Maharashtra, a fourth-grader named Suraj Balu Zore proudly told IPS that he can now effortlessly operate a laptop computer. Fallen by the wayside of urban India’s information technology (IT) superhighway, Khairat village – located just 80 kilometres from booming Mumbai – still has no access to the Internet.  But thanks to the recent efforts of ‘one laptop per child’ – a project...

The National Mission to improve the delivery of justice is at work. In October 2009, on the basis of a Vision Document adopted at a judicial conference in New Delhi, the Government of India approved in principle a National Mission to reduce pendency and delays in the judicial system and enhance accountability through structural changes, higher performance standards and capacity-building. Many past attempts to achieve the goals did not yield results...

In the winter of 2009, a few months after the Congress announced a financial austerity drive for its staff, Sonia Gandhi famously travelled by economy class. But what UPA government's ministers probably saved on air fares, they seem to have more than made up on land. Fuel bills of Union ministers, since the financial curbs were put in place, were accessed by RTI activist Chetan Kothari. Merely 31 of the 84...

The Smart Card Project is helping nearly 12.7 million poor people in Andhra Pradesh to get timely payment of wages It was conceived as a vehicle to promote financial inclusion by taking banking services to the unbanked poor, harnessing information and communications technology to ensure the benefits of public welfare programmes reach those they are intended for by plugging leakages. The Andhra Pradesh Smart Card Project, launched in 2007, is...