-The Hindu Banks continue denying loans to low-income groups, insisting on sticking to a standard EMI route even though they are dealing with a complex social issue. In July 2012, Pradeep Kumar, a 36-year-old resident of Ladpur, a shanty town that sits on the north-western periphery of Delhi, applied for an employment loan at the magistrate’s office in Kanjawala district. Under the Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Yojana or PMRY — a funding policy...

-The Hindu ‘They juggle multiple tasks and are often unable to vent their frustration’ Fifteen people commit suicide every hour in India, shows the most recent data by the National Crime Records Bureau. Of these, around 17 per cent are housewives. In contrast, suicide by farmers makes up only 3 per cent of all suicides. The NCRB divides the total suicides into 10 professional categories — housewife, service (government), service (private), public sector...

-The Hindu SRIKAKULAM: Mushroom cultivation is helping many Unemployed youth and tribal farmers to get decent livelihood with less investment in Srikakulam district. Women groups have joined them in learning cultivation techniques thanks to huge demand for mushrooms in Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts. National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has been conducting a series of training programmes with the support of various non governmental organisations including BREDS and ARTS...

Amidst brouhaha over the importance of MGNREGA, the recently released 68th Round National Sample Survey (NSS) report clears the air whether the MGNREGA had been beneficial to employment of persons from Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Based on a survey of nearly 59,700 households in rural areas of India, the NSS 68th Round data shows that the proportion of persons who got job in...

-Economic and Political Weekly Unlimited growth for prosperity in a fi nite planet is not possible. Ecological economists like Tim Jackson, Peter Victor, and others talk about prosperity without growth and highlight the need for greening the economy on a community scale. Using the "criteria of green economy enterprise" set by Jackson and Victor as a tool, this article looks at khadi production, India's community-level cloth production system. Sumanas Koulagi (k.sumanas@yahoo.in) is...