-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...

-IndiaSpend.org As many as 298 of 542 Lok Sabha members have not spent a single rupee of the annual Rs 5 crore that is set aside for constituency development A year after they took office, 298 of 542 members of the 16th Lok Sabha – India’s lower house of Parliament – have not spent a rupee from the Rs 5 crore that is set aside annually for them to develop their constituencies,...

-Economic and Political Weekly Unlimited growth for prosperity in a fi nite planet is not possible. Ecological economists like Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, and others talk about prosperity without growth and highlight the need for greening the economy on a community scale. Using the "criteria of green economy enterprise" set by Jackson and Victor as a tool, this article looks at khadi production, India's community-level cloth production system. Sumanas Koulagi (k.sumanas@yahoo.in) is...

-The Indian Express Unused priority sector lending funds of commercial banks will be used to set up the Rs 20,000 crore corpus of the proposed MUDRA Bank. The bank will use at least 65 per cent of its funds for lending to micro enterprises run by members of scheduled castes and tribes. Typically, domestic commercial banks deposit their lending shortfall from priority sector to the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund of the NABARD...

-The Times of India PUNE: Three years after she graduated from business school, Bhagyashri Dixit took the plunge and set up her own graphic T-shirt brand to fulfil a lifelong dream of setting up her own enterprise. Five years after the brand - SheepStop - had found its feet, Dixit gave birth to her son and is now able to balance her responsibilities towards work and home. "Setting up your own business...