-Frontline How far will the proposed women's bank help marginalised sections when women's SHGs get little support and find it hard even to open accounts in public sector banks? WHILE the recent announcement of a women's bank in the Union Budget has been touted as a progressive measure for the financial inclusion of women, no concrete measures have been forthcoming to make all existing public sector banks sensitive to the needs...

-PTI Hyderabad: Country's only listed micro lender SKS Microfinance today said it plans to resume lending operations in Andhra Pradesh soon, two years after the state government came out with a stringent laws to regulate the industry. SKS Chief Financial Officer, Dill Raj said the recent Supreme Court's interim order was of great relief to them and paves way to resume operations in the state. "That is primary relief we got (from the...

-The Hindu Bangalore: 40 child labourers freed from bars, hotels in Gandhinagar area in the city Rescued from the various bars, restaurants and lodges in the Gandhinagar area, the line of children in the age group 14 to 16 sat on the floor of the Balakara Balamandira on Wednesday afternoon. "Forty children were taken into custody after raids on about 10 establishments. One of them was a 13-year-old girl. Twenty-eight were from Karnataka...

-The Hindu The commission, which has won acclaim for conducting elections with fairness and integrity, is now in danger of seeing a huge gutting of its powers to do so The Union Government has told the Supreme Court that, in its view, the Election Commission of India has no power to disqualify a candidate on grounds of “correctness or otherwise” of his/her election accounts. A counter-affidavit filed by the Union Law Ministry...

-The Business Standard Kolkata: Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Ford Foundation International professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has slammed the government's Right To Education (RTE) programme. This, he said, was only a step towards ensuring a means of livelihood for teachers. Banerjee said the programme, implemented in 2009, lacked sense. He said he wasn't hopeful about the outcome of the initiative. "It is simply for the teachers, by the teachers,...