-Livemint.com The problem escalated due to the government’s focus on infrastructure during 2002-09, especially with the efforts made to promote public-private partnerships The past two years or so have seen rapidly increasing stress in the Indian banking sector, with non-performing assets (NPAs) steadily climbing from under 3% to over 13% of total assets. Loan-loss provisioning for NPAs has seriously eroded the capital base of several banks, limiting their ability to make further...

-Down to Earth Can pre-poll sops like giving smart phones with internet connectivity to farmers increase farm income? Last week, thousands of farmers and agricultural workers poured into the National Capital to attract and focus the attention of the Central government to their demands. The Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Rally, organised by farmers’ organization, All India Kisan Sabha, and the All India Agriculture Workers Union, broke all records as far as crowd numbers...

-Livemint.com Farming activities comprise more than half of the total average monthly income for agricultural households, as per the latest survey by Nabard Bengaluru/ New Delhi: Farmers may be looking for alternative avenues of income, but it is too soon to write off the significance of agriculture in rural India, data from the recently released Nabard All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey (NAFIS) shows. An initial reading of the survey findings seems to...

-Business Standard This survey also shows how things have moved forward since the last large-scale sample survey conducted by NSSO in 2012-13 The recent survey by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), which attracted criticism for increasing the threshold of income for agricultural households, has some insights into how the rural landscape in the country has been changing. Released on August 17, the survey defined those households as agricultural that...

-The Economic Times Vimla Nishad bends on her small chulha and tries to light a fire. Her two-room house fills up with smoke and her two-year-old son starts coughing. The firewood is damp as it has been raining the whole day so it is taking longer to light up. She looks around nervously as it is 8 pm and she has to get the dinner going. Sitting in one corner of...