-TheHansIndia.com Social activist Medha Patkar comes down heavily on AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu for ‘grabbing fertile lands’ from farmers for high-rise buildings She also criticises Telangana State government for its ‘anti-farmer policies’ Hyderabad: The third Kisan Swaraj Sammelan has called upon farmers to put up a unified fight in support of their demand for providing them with a comprehensive Farmers' Income Guarantee Act. They were of the unanimous opinion that such...

The budgetary support to interest subvention scheme has increased by almost 14 times between 2006-07 and 2016-17. However, the much-touted subsidised short-term credit scheme provides little help to the small and marginal farmers, apart from tenant farmers. According to the Committee on Medium-term Path on Financial Inclusion, which submitted its report in December 2015, the interest subvention scheme suffers from 3 types of defects: i. Subsidised credit may not be...

-The Telegraph Bangalore: A mobile app that enables donors to save blood for future use by maintaining accounts was launched today by an ad agency that has joined hands with the Indian Red Cross Society's Karnataka branch. Possibly the world's first such project, an app called Blood Banking on iOS and Android platforms was launched with an eye on the younger generation that is more attuned to smart technologies for anything from...

-The Indian Express Instead of announcing new schemes, focus to be on those already announced and key sectors As the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government pads up to enter its third year in office, its focus would be on key areas such as banking, defence, retail, manufacturing, infrastructure and job creation. If the first two years were about announcing signature schemes and campaigns, and setting the agenda for the...

-The Hindu Business Line IOB, BoB and Canara Bank lead, finds study by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiatives   New Delhi: As the Finance Ministry and the central bank try to clean up the balance sheets of troubled public sector lenders, a new study has found that banks that saw a sharp rise in bad loans in 2014-15 were not very forthcoming with information requests by the public. While noting that there was “no positive...