An amendment to the Land Acquisition Act is being formulated to ensure minimum displacement of people and assess compensation on a scientific basis, Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla said on Monday. Speaking at a one-day Infrastructure Financing Conference jointly organised by the High Commission of India and the City of London at Mansion House here, the Finance Secretary said, "The Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, 2010, is under preparation, based on the principles...

India’s rapidly growing private microcredit industry faces imminent collapse as almost all borrowers in one of India’s largest states have stopped repaying their loans, egged on by politicians who accuse the industry of earning outsize profits on the backs of the poor. The crisis has been building for weeks, but has now reached a critical stage. Indian banks, which put up about 80 percent of the money that the companies...

Amid the heat and dust over high interest rates charged by microfinance institutions and reports of coercive recovery methods by some lenders in Andhra Pradesh, MFIs in eastern India are trying to strike a more cordial note with borrowers by lowering interest rates. At least three MFIs based out of Kolkata are on the verge of slashing lending rates by nearly 500 basis points to 19.1% per annum, on reducing balance...

BJP is screaming hoarse about corruption in the UPA and demanding telecom minister A Raja's scalp for alleged misdeeds related to 2G spectrum allotment. But in Karnataka, where the party is in power, more skeletons are tumbling out of the scam-scarred B S Yeddyurappa government's cupboard. The latest to come to light had the chief minister allot land to his sons' company. In the first of the three cases, about which...

The poster boy of microfinance is now seeking some anonymity. In Andhra Pradesh, the epicentre of the worst crisis faced by microfinance in India, SKS Microfinance is playing down its identity and going into preservation mode. At its modest office in a residential colony in Warangal district, India’s largest microfinance company has taken down its board. At its head office in upmarket Begumpet in Hyderabad, it hung a cloth mesh...