Satyam Computer Services and its former auditor PricewaterCoopers (PwC) have agreed to pay a combined $17.5m (£10.7m) in fines in the US after one of India's biggest corporate scandals. Satyam, an outsourcing company, will pay $10m for falsely reporting more than $1bn in profits over five years. The company's chairman Ramalinga Raju admitted to the fraud in 2009. Satyam's shares were indirectly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) as well as...
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Cash transfers and food insecurity by Kannan Kasturi
Distribution of basic food grains and fuel at controlled prices every month through the Public Distribution System (PDS) could be the largest service provided by the Indian State, touching as it does over 65 million families through a network of nearly half a million retail shops. Given that the urban middle class has little stake in the health of the PDS, there have to be some compelling reasons for the...
More »Mumbai child sex ratio worsens by Makarand Gadgil
The population of India’s commercial capital is growing very slowly in the suburbs while it is shrinking in the old city, the preliminary census data on Maharashtra released on Friday shows. Meanwhile, the population of adjoining Thane district has grown explosively at 35.9% between 2001 and 2011, as expensive real estate in the city has pushed people to satellite towns such as Kalyan and Vashi in this district. The shift in people...
More »Have-nots know little, haves do little by Masoom Gupte & Shivani Shinde
Amid technical and infrastructural constraints, Maharashtra has rolled out 1.2 million Aadhaars, but the beneficiaries have been able to make little use of these numbers Ashok Bhil, a 25-year-old graduate from Navalpur, 7 Km from Tembhli, is disappointed with the way the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is rolling out Aadhaar in Maharashtra. Last September, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government chose Tembhli, a small village in the predominantly tribal Nandurbar...
More »Experts warn Africa must learn from India's microfinance problems by Teo Kermeliotis
It has been lauded as one of the most promising ways of using the market to reduce poverty and boost economies in some of the world's most deprived areas. But in recent months the work of microfinance institutions (MFIs), which provide small loans to poor people with no access to traditional banking services, has come under scrutiny after a spate of suicides in the Indian province of Andhra Pradesh was linked...
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