Time magazine picked him as one of 100 people shaping our world. Today, he’s held responsible for bringing an exciting, inspirational business into disrepute. Oh, and his wife says he beat her and snatched their son. There could not be a more controversial torchbearer than Vikram Akula for an industry as quintessentially Indian as microfinance, the business of providing the poor with loans, as small as R5,000, secured not with...
More »SEARCH RESULT
Total Matching Records found : 205
Jairam ‘criminal’ tag on fuel-guzzlers
Environment minister Jairam Ramesh today said the use of sports utility vehicles and BMWs in India was “criminal” and called for changes in diesel pricing to discourage people from riding fuel-guzzlers. He said India’s SUV market was growing on subsidised diesel, the owners benefiting from the subsidies intended mainly to help farmers. “The growth of large-size vehicles like SUVs is a growth of concern.... The use of vehicles such as SUVs and...
More »Discourage sale of BMWs, Audis, says Jairam
Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh Friday called for corrections in the fiscal policy to discourage luxurious cars like BMW and Audi in the country as they were a major source of greenhouse gases. Speaking at a workshop on 'Promoting Low Carbon Transport in India' here, Ramesh said there was no need to subsidise diesel as it only helped the sale of luxurious cars in the country. "We don't need subsidy in...
More »P Sainath, rural editor of The Hindu interviewed by Himal South Asia
The amount of rural reportage in the Indian media remains far too low, with even important stories such as those on farmer suicides tending to be ignored. One of the outspoken critics of this trend has been P Sainath, rural-affairs editor of The Hindu and 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts. He was also the journalist who originally broke the story on...
More »Cash, liquor flow free in UP panchayat polls by Virendra Nath Bhatt
This time in Uttar Pradesh, panchayat elections — the first phase starts Monday — are being fought with an intensity never seen before. Eight persons have already died in poll-related violence over the past 15 days. All the trappings of a typical poll are there — hoardings; free flow of liquor, money and clothes for voters; and candidates moving about in SUVs. “So much money and violence was seen neither in the...
More »
