-PTI New Delhi: An RBI survey has found that 30% ATMs of public sector banks and 10% belonging to private banks were non-functional due to technical snags and no cash, among other reasons. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, minister of state for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said RBI has informed that it recently conducted a “representative sample survey” of about 4,000 ATMs situated in metro, semi-urban, urban and rural...

-The Economic Times For Latak in Assam's Dhemaji district, floods are a living reality. But this remote village of about 300 houses has found a novel cost-effective way to connect flood-affected areas — a bridge made out of neatly stacked bamboo. It may not sound like a big success story but, for the village panchayat, it is a cause for much celebration. The panchayat planned the project after deliberations with villagers...

-The Indian Express The Modi government should spell out clearly what it wants to double by 2022 — nominal or real incomes. The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development’s (NABARD) 34th foundation day celebrations on July 12 saw a day-long deliberation on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for “doubling farmers’ incomes by 2022”. This was an event at Vigyan Bhavan in the national capital, where the ministries of agriculture and Finance...

-The Financial Express The government’s move to roll out the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) from the ongoing kharif season has got a boost with 18 agriculturally critical states, including Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha and Maharashtra, having floated tenders to identify insurers who will offer the scheme to farmers. According to agriculture ministry data, Rajasthan has completed the bidding process for identifying insurance companies...

-The Hindu The state has become exclusively concerned with the interests of globalised capital and the domestic corporate-financial oligarchy aligned with it. The income squeeze on peasants is one consequence Central to the “reforms” introduced in 1991 was not a “retreat of the state” in favour of the “market” as is commonly supposed, but a change in the nature of the state. This change was not necessarily a conscious decision; it was...