Regulation in India's microfinance sector aims to address feckless borrowing and reckless lending – but will the new restrictions entrench poverty, rather than end it? One of the many crushing burdens for India's poor bear is debt; unable to make ends meet, they turn to traditional moneylenders. They are willing to extend credit, but at unconscionably high rates – sometimes exceeding 80%, and keeping borrowers in lifelong penury. Popular cinema and...

If the Unique Identity project is such a good thing why is the man heading it unable to answer simple questions about it? Since the publication of his doorstopper of a Book Imagining India in 2009, Nandan Nilekani has done a superb job of reinventing himself. The former head of software giant Infosys Technologies was overnight cast in the role of a visionary with his unabashedly free market prescription to turn...

These days, Jhum cultivation also known as ‘slash and burn method of cultivation’, ‘shifting cultivation’ etc has been under continuous scanner for its productivity and ecological viability. This form of cultivation is followed widely in almost all the North Eastern States including the hill areas of Manipur. There are those who consider jhum cultivation as unproductive and ecologically disastrous so that people (understood as tribal people of the hill areas)...

Be wary of torture-induced confessions before police Mere membership of a banned organisation will not make a person criminal unless he resorts to violence or incites people to violence or creates public disorder by violence or incitement to violence, the Supreme Court held on Thursday. A Bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra gave this ruling, setting aside a designated court judgment which convicted Arup Bhuyan under Section 3 (5)...

The Centre has asked Maharashtra to “drop” its case against Ilina Sen, the wife of jailed rights activist Binayak Sen, a central government official said today. Ilina was Booked for allegedly not informing police about foreign delegates’ participation at a conference organised by the Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS) and the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Vishwavidyalaya (MGAV) at Wardha in January. The ATS Nagpur unit had noted in an FIR that Form...