-The Hindu Business Line IOB, BoB and Canara Bank lead, finds study by Commonwealth Human Rights Initiatives New Delhi: As the Finance Ministry and the central bank try to clean up the balance sheets of troubled public sector lenders, a new study has found that banks that saw a sharp rise in bad loans in 2014-15 were not very forthcoming with information requests by the public. While noting that there was “no positive...
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Who stole my broadband? -Thomas K Thomas & Pratim Ranjan Bose
-The Hindu Business Line BusinessLine goes to villages, including those visited in 2014, to understand the progress of the ambitious National Optical Fibre Network. Unused infrastructure and low awareness tell a story of missed links In one corner of the Ramnagar village panchayat office, in Panisagar block of Tripura, is a defunct four-year-old computer. The machine, connected with a 10 mbps broadband line was supposed to bring digital services to this remote...
More »Public Sector Banks turned down 30% of RTI pleas last year -Himanshi Dhawan
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: One third of the requests for information filed with Public Sector Banks were turned down last year. Of the 79,148 applications filed in 2014-2015, 30.5% were rejected. About 24 banks dealt with 79,148 RTI applications which amounts to 56.4% of the total volume of RTI applications received by the ministry of finance. Incidentally, finance ministry received the highest number of RTIs (1.4 lakh) among all public...
More »Freedom in peril -R Ramakumar
-Frontline The government’s passage of the Aadhaar Bill in complete disregard of even basic parliamentary procedures and in subversion of an ongoing judicial process puts at risk a number of constitutional rights and liberties of citizens. The benefits cited are just ploys to realise a neoliberal dream. “Congressmen are dancing as if [Aadhaar] was a herb for all cures. With the Supreme Court pulling up the Centre, people are now seeking...
More »Highlights of Union Budget 2016-17
-The Hindu In case you missed the Budget, here's a round-up. Affirming that the economy is right on track, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget for 2016-17. Citing that the CPI inflation has come down to 5.4% from 9 plus, he said it is huge relief for the public. Tax Infrastructure and agriculture cess to be levied. Excise duty raised from 10 to 15 per cent on tobacco products other than beedis 1 per...
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