-The Telegraph Ranchi: Sluggish economy and soaring personal aspirations are teaming up to create fertile ground for quick-rich Chit fund schemes and non-banking finance companies such as the now-infamous Saradha to mushroom, but rules to give Jharkhand investors the much-needed safety net are hanging fire since over a year. Jharkhand Assembly had early last year forwarded rules framed by the state's institutional finance department for the President's consideration under The Chit funds...

-The Business Standard A trail of unfulfilled promises follow her in rural and urban Bengal The furious letter-writing since 2010 about the Chit fund industry in West Bengal suggests that everyone knew the industry was going to implode. Bengal has one of the highest rates in small savings, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Somen Mitra wrote to the prime minister in 2011. The state buys the highest number of new life insurance policies, and...

-The Indian Express     FOR Suranjan and Tumpa Choudhury, a couple from Madhyamgram in North 24-Parganas district, darkness has descended for the second time in their lives. In 2007, Suranja lost his job after the factory, where he worked shut down abruptly. He was then 36. A friend of him advised him to invest in Saradha Group and become an agent of the company. He had no other option than to accept...

-PTI Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has sought to blame the Centre for the Chit fund scam, has claimed that the central government reduced the rate of interest in small savings to drive depositors towards ponzi schemes. "It is because the Centre has reduced the interest rates in small savings in the post office, poor people and those who have retired keep their money in these Chit funds with...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Saradha group's collapse has possibly bankrupted lakhs of small investors robbing them of their life svaings, and has rendered thousands of its agents jobless. The scam highlights the failure of the government and its regulatory agencies to reign in the mushrooming Chit fund companies in West Bengal. It also brings under the scanner the Trinamool Congress' proximity with the tainted group. In the wake of the...