-The Indian Express Chit fund scams shine the light on the need to overhaul the financial regulatory architecture Cases of semi-regulated or unregulated entities making unrealistic promises to consumers are roiling the financial landscape. It is high time the government sees the pattern and undertakes fundamental change. The search for a solution must factor in two realities. The first is the failure of the formal regulated financial system. The breakdown of present...

-The Telegraph The "Bonzi" edifice, Bengal's version of the fraudulent Ponzi scheme that conned US investors a century ago, is shaking at its foundations. The panic set off by Saradha defaulting on payments has spread to similar schemes run by other firms and triggered protests and attacks on company offices in several parts of the state. These schemes' mostly small-time rural investors have begun to panic about the safety of their hard-earned...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...

-The Economic Times In what could hobble the government's plans to give Aadhar a key role in banking and a central pin of the direct cash transfer scheme, several state-run banks have refused to bear any liability for transactions done with customers that were authenticated through the unique identity (UID) mechanism. Banks and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had been convinced by the finance ministry to use Aadhar to fulfill the...

-Live Mint Subsidized loans given to farmers through KCCs could very well be the next big source of NPAs for banks Mumbai: A surge in exposure to farm debt through Kisan Credit Cards (KCCs) could emerge as a risk for India's state-run banks, according to experts. Subsidized loans are given to farmers through KCCs by state-owned banks. Until March 2012, the outstanding amount on such loans was`1.6 trillion through 20.3 million cards, as...