-Bloomberg The corpse of Indian farmer Bengali Singh burned to ash atop a blazing funeral pyre on the banks of the river Ganges in 2006. Five years later, the dead man was recorded as being paid by India's $33 billion rural jobs program to dig an irrigation canal in Jharkhand state. Officials in his village and the surrounding region used at least 500 identities, including those of Singh, a disabled child of...
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Kisan Credit Cards: Bad loan bubble waiting to burst?-Dinesh Unnikrishnan
-Live Mint Subsidized loans given to farmers through KCCs could very well be the next big source of NPAs for banks Mumbai: A surge in exposure to farm debt through Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs) could emerge as a risk for India's state-run banks, according to experts. Subsidized loans are given to farmers through KCCs by state-owned banks. Until March 2012, the outstanding amount on such loans was`1.6 trillion through 20.3 million cards, as...
More »Delhi lacks basic services: CAG report-Devjyot Ghoshal and Ruchika Chitravanshi
-The Business Standard CAG state audit report NCT has also unearthed a glaring lack of planning cutting across projects, sectors It may be India's capital city, but behind the New Delhi's storied corridors of power and flush coffers, the metropolis is a difficult mess for the ordinary citizen. The Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) state audit report for the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi government has unearthed a series of significant shortcoming...
More »A scheme for the poor, not a poor scheme-Neelakshi Mann and Varad Pande
-The Indian Express Of late, there has been much public debate around the effectiveness of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), particularly on its targeting of the poor and the socioeconomic profile of its beneficiaries (most notably in this newspaper). It is important to look at these claims closely, not as much to counter them but as to present the real picture that has been undermined by often-unsubstantiated...
More »Aakash is no silver bullet-Akshat Rathi
-The Hindu The government needs to open its eyes and realise that the technological utopia it envisions in the low-cost tablet is no cure for poor education, poverty or inequality The last few days have brought the Aakash tablet back into the media limelight. Last Friday, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister M.M. Pallam Raju said that troubles with the manufacturer could doom the project. But the next day, former HRD Minister Kapil...
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