-PTI Employees of public sector banks have gone on two-day nationwide strike today opposing banking sector reforms and outsourcing of non-core activities, affecting operations. Several private sector banks, foreign banks and ATMs, however, continued to operate normally. The strike call was given by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella organisation of nine unions of employees and officers of PSU banks. They are protesting against banking sector reforms and unilateral implementation of...

-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...

-Reuters SUPALI: Two years ago, Vilas Yelmar took out a 200,000 rupee ($3,610) bank loan to develop a small grape orchard in a dusty hamlet southeast of Mumbai. The bank has repeatedly asked for the loan to be repaid, but Yelmar, whose annual income has risen to 2 million rupees, has spent the money on a new sport utility vehicle and a lavish family wedding. He is one of an increasing number...

In 2010, Andhra Pradesh witnessed a series of suicides. These were not cases of farmers' suicides—a regular occurrence in the state which continues to be in the grip of an agrarian crisis. The victims in these cases happened to be the poorest of the poor; most of them illiterate dalits and adivasis. The first information reports (FIRs) of the police reveal that most of the suicides were due to coercive...

-PTI   Mamata had said that co-operative banks would not be allowed to attach properties of farmers for Loan recovery in cases of default Refinance institution Nabard today said it would oppose any amendment to West Bengal Cooperative Societies Act of, 2006 as suggested recently by state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. "If the West Bengal government goes ahead with amending the Act without informing Nabard, then we will oppose it," National Bank for Agriculture...