-The Hindu More needs to be done to enforce the law banning manual scavenging. This monsoon, India's Parliament passed a law of enormous social significance prohibiting and punishing manual scavenging, which remains the most degrading form of untouchability and caste discrimination in the country. This is not the first time this practice was outlawed: untouchability and forced labour were forbidden in the Constitution itself and, in 1993, a law was first passed...

-The Hindu Bangalore: In a major shift in its lending practice, the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has opened a lending window to the corporate sector for construction of warehouses and creation of cold storages and cold chains. NABARD had only been granting soft Loans to State governments for social sector projects. Speaking to The Hindu on Monday, G.R. Chintala, Chief General Manager (CGM), Regional Office, Bangalore, said it was...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: A few weeks after RBI governor Raghuram Rajan stressed on building credit histories of individuals based on the Aadhaar number, one bank has introduced unique identity-based eKYC for opening Loan and savings accounts. Axis Bank, which is using payment company Visa's network to access Aadhaar database , will introduce the eKYC facility in around 25 branches next week. The branches will open Loan and deposit accounts based...

-Reuters NEW DELHI: The Asian Development Bank will provide a $500 million Loan to build a transmission system for solar and wind energy in western India, the bank said on Friday, a day after it announced a $400 million package for a water and sanitation programme in the eastern part of the country. The Loans from the Manila-based bank come at a time when India is looking to boost dollar inflows to...

-Al Jazeera   The reforms promoted by Prime Minister Singh do not go far enough to help food production and the hungry. The debate on the Food Security Act is based on myths on both sides. The government is propagating the myth that it is the largest anti-poverty and anti-hunger programme ever introduced anywhere in the world. The programme is being heralded as Sonia Gandhi's dream project, and billed as a miracle solution...