-Live Mint   The poor remain poor because they lack resources. And the formal finance sector does not want to lend them because they are too poor, costs are high and they hardly have anything to offer as collateral. That is, they are trapped in the vicious circle of poverty. This was so until the arrival of microfinance—successfully demonstrated by the Bangladesh model that the poor are “good” borrowers. It was held...

The Life insurance Corporation (LIC) invested more than Rs 3,600 crore last year in the tobacco industry, anti-tobacco activists and cancer specialists said today, describing the investments as ironical and unethical. Figures obtained through the right to information route by a consortium of activists and doctors show that in 2010-11, LIC had invested in shares of ITC and VST Industries and in debentures of Dharampal Satyapal Ltd, which makes chewable tobacco...

-The Times of India   Should government-run companies invest in tobacco firms? This is the question that Voices of Tobacco Victims (VoTV), an NGO working for cancer patients, has raised after its recent query under the RTI Act revealed that the Life insurance Corporation of India has invested up to Rs 3,500 crore in various tobacco companies. "It's the greatest irony that the government spends Rs 10,000 crore on treatment of tobacco-related illnesses...

There are fears that curative health care will be left to the private sector, while the public system will handle preventive and low-quality care. AN issue of The Lancet earlier this year highlighted some of the problems with public health in India, acknowledging that “it is in crisis”. The robust economic growth over the past 20 years has not translated into better health indices; indeed the decline of infant and child...

The beneficiaries of the land reforms in West Bengal get pushed out of their land under the new regime. MOGHAI MUNDA is dead. No one is there to mourn him but his distraught parents and his young wife who seems to have lost her power of speech. But it is a significant death, even if it is ignored by the ubiquitous media and, therefore, by the world at large. Like the...