The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is to consider a proposal for opening of weekly branches in unbanked panchayats in the state. Gumla is one among the 16 districts, which have been classified as under-banked districts in the state. Delay in disbursing wages under MGNREGA and executing other welfare schemes will now be sorted out by reaching banking services to hitherto unbanked areas and new measures have also been initiated. Before the...

Delhi NGOs initiate a process to survey the city's homeless people and reach welfare schemes to them. IN the narrow lanes of Khari Baoli, Asia's largest wholesale spice and grocery market in the crowded Old Delhi area near the Red Fort, labourers grapple with heavy sacks of grain, pulses, and so on as they load them on to wooden trolleys or unload them from trucks. There is no room for...

The green hills -- those that once used to soothe the entire region through the stilly silence, and fill it with the great wonder of multitudinousness -- have suddenly turned into a valley of death. First Diarrhea and then Cholera, the quiet bosom of the picturesque Raygada district is today torn by the screams of pain and loss of lives. People are dying like flies and hundreds are lying on...

A combination of factors led by state policy has enabled the southern State to become a notable achiever with respect to some key indicators of development. In 2001, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen recorded an eyebrow-raising fact in his book, “Development as Freedom”, that Tamil Nadu and Kerala had both achieved much faster rates of decline in fertility than China had achieved since it introduced its one-child policy. That same year, the international...

An initiative to set up information technology (IT) kiosks to offer government services in rural India is likely to miss its expanded target of establishing 250,000 centres because of delays in releasing funds. The scheme to set up 100,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs), through which villagers would be able to access a host of services, was launched in 2006. In June 2009, President Pratibha Patil said in her inaugural address to the...