-The Hindu The agriculture sector’s performance has not been commensurate with the increasing subsidised credit it receives Farmers on the warpath would mean that agriculture reforms have again occupied centrestage not just in the minds of the politicians but also policymakers. To enable small farmers to diversify their crops or improve their income they must have access to credit at reasonable rates of interest. This has been an agenda of the triad...

-The Indian Express Launched in June to help vendors amid the pandemic, the PM SVANidhi scheme is a micro-credit facility that provides street vendors a collateral-free loan of Rs 10,000 at concessional rates of an estimated 7.25%. After being nudged by municipalities to step up loan disbursements under the PM Street Vendor’s AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi) programme, Banks are writing back to report that many of these collateral-free loans are turning into...

-The Hindu State intimidation of protesting groups cannot serve as a substitute for political dialogue The NIA’s decision to summon people associated with the ongoing farmers agitation as ‘witnesses’ in a sedition case is definitely out of the ordinary, even if not entirely surprising. Punjabi actor Deep Sidhu and farmers’ leader Baldev Singh Sirsa are among 40 people it has summoned in connection with a fresh case registered on December 15, 2020...

-The Indian Express As the problem of non-performing assets persists in a sector stressed by the pandemic, the RBI Governor has agreed to look at a proposal for creating a bad Bank. What are the arguments for and against the concept? Mumbai, New Delhi: The idea of setting up a bad Bank to resolve the growing problem of non-performing assets (NPAs), or loans on which borrowers have defaulted, is back on the...

-The New Indian Express When he was in Class IV, Binesh Balan had done manual jobs in his native Kolichal in Kasaragod to escape grinding poverty. KOZHIKODE: When he was in Class IV, Binesh Balan had done manual jobs in his native Kolichal in Kasaragod to escape grinding poverty.  Two decades on, the boy, now 29, belonging to the Mavilan tribal community, succeeded in developing an open Banking software as a researcher...