Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar lags far behind his ministerial colleagues in his wealth, details of which were made public on Monday. Details of the assets of 30 Bihar ministers, including Kumar's were uploaded in the government websites as a step towards ending corruption and promised by the chief minister. Kumar's moveable assets include Rs 31,760 in cash, Rs 57,770 in bank account, a Santro car of 2003 model, an old TV...

Rolling out a slew of measures for the working class in 2010, the government effected key reforms in some labour acts while also raising the annual rate of returns on employee provident funds to 9.5 per cent. The steps came as the government also unveiled the draft national policy on employment with suggestions of launching of a employment guarantee scheme in urban areas on the lines of NREGA. It amended the Payment...

Tamil Nadu has become the second largest state after Andhra Pradesh in the self-help group (SHG)-bank linkage programme launched by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard). In the state, 209,197 SHGs were credit linked with a financial assistance of Rs 2,791.65 crore in 2009-10, taking the cumulative number of SHGs credit linked to 852,791 (including repeat doses) with a bank loan of Rs 9,394.70 crore. Nabard said that a...

Since the beginning of December last, 220 tenant farmers in the state have committed suicide or died of shock, crushed by mounting debts and loss of crops. Overall, the farmer death toll stands at a staggering 350-400. Though the fickle weather wreaked havoc, experts believe it's only partly to blame as several other factors have worked against the farming community. While economic expansion continues to bypass the farming community leaving...

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has started investigating the Rs 300-crore fraud by Citibank manager Shivraj Puri after receiving a report from the bank. Officials at Citibank said the RBI had been regularly updated on its internal investigations since the fraud came to light. “We have shared all the details with the RBI. The RBI will now investigate the matter further,” the Citibank official said. An RBI spokesperson confirmed that the probe...