-South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) Farm ponds dotting the agricultural fields immediately grab your attention as you enter Hiwargaon Pawasa – a small village of about 1500 population in Sangamner Taluka of Ahmadnagar District. The village is located just off NH-50, the national highway connecting Pune and Nashik. Farm ponds start to appear as soon as you turn east from NH-50 (which broadly runs North South) to...

-The Hindu Under a searing sun, the Agariyas continue to make salt in the Little Rann of Kutch just as their ancestors have done down the ages A pair of black gum boots stands in the corner of Dhirubhai’s temporary shack, his home for eight months in the Little Rann of Kutch. The shack, built entirely of jute bags and Plastic sheets and propped up by bamboo poles, houses nine members of...

-The Hindu Surakhpur, declared ‘fully digital payment enabled’ by government, rues low literacy, poor connectivity Around 10 days ago, a team of Delhi government officials handed over two PoS (point of sale) machines to kirana (grocery) store owners Surat Singh and Ramesh Kumar, both residents of Surakhpur village in Najafgarh, on the Delhi-Haryana border. The officials taught the two how to use the machines. On Wednesday, when The Hindu visited the village, where...

-Scroll.in The Paharia Adivasi community says they are cheated in their banking transactions and don't know what to do with the debit cards. Just days after the Central government’s demonetisation announcement on November 8 kicked off a major push for digital payments, Kusheshwar Paharia, a resident of Nathgoda village in Jharkhand’s Godda district, received a thick packet in the mail. It contained a letter from the State Bank of India, with which he...

-The Times of India BENGALURU/ NEW DELHI: Through Sunday, the media was buzzing with reports that petrol pumps would refuse to accept card payments for fuel from Monday. Anxious consumers, already grappling with a cash shortage, fretted that this would directly clash with the government's efforts to wean people off cash and encourage digital payments. Finally, there was some relief on Sunday night after banks agreed to defer their decision to charge...