-The Hindu Loans disbursed to State Governments by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) for creating rural infrastructure has crossed the Rs.1 lakh crore mark. Of that Rs.6,523 crore has been disbursed in Tamil Nadu. This is the fourth among the States that have availed of substantial financial support from NABARD. The other three are Andhra Pradesh (Rs.9,711 cr.), Uttar Pradesh (Rs.7984 cr.), Gujarat (Rs.7,324 cr.), According to a NABARD...
More »SEARCH RESULT
States holding up plan to recapitalize regional rural banks by Remya Nair & Anup Roy
The Union government’s plan to recapitalize 40 of the 82 regional rural banks (RRBs) is at risk as some of the state governments are either delaying or refusing to pay their share of money. Due to this, the government has only been able to recapitalize around 12 RRBs, with the stakeholders collectively infusing Rs. 300 crore. The cabinet had approved the Rs. 2,200 crore recapitalization plan of 40 RRBs in February,...
More »SHG makes low-cost sanitary napkins
-The Hindu The Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat has launched an ambitious project to improve personal hygiene among women with the launch of a project to manufacture low-cost sanitary napkins. Ten members of the Isiri Self-Help Group (SHG) at Layla village of Belthangady taluk were trained by an NGO to manufacture sanitary napkins with cotton made from wood pulp. The sanitary napkins were less than half an inch thick and were called Safety...
More »Agriculture in ruins by Devinder Sharma
Degraded soils, depleting groundwater, and chemical pesticides are playing havoc, placing agriculture in terrible distress. I haven’t forgotten that night. Sitting with a group of farmers in a village in Ludhiana district in Punjab, at the height of the Green Revolution, a farmer showed me a bag of fertiliser that he brought from the market. “Why are you showing me this bag”, I asked. “Wait”, he said, and began to open the...
More »MFIs: Still in the doldrums by Shruti Sarma
MFIs in Andhra Pradesh are paying for the sins of their past. Market for new loans has dried up, banks have turned off their spigots while the AP government is content to sit back and watch. It has been eleven months since the Andhra Pradesh government issued an ordinance—later converted into the Andhra Pradesh Micro-Finance Institutions (Regulation of Money Lending) Act—which, the microfinance industry hoped, would be the magic remedy that...
More »