-Livemint.com With banks and ATMs under water, people were able to draw cash from Aadhaar-enabled micro-ATMs New Delhi: When heavy rains marooned large parts of Tamil Nadu, banking correspondents (BC) armed with Aadhaar-enabled micro-ATMs fanned out to help people retrieve cash from their bank accounts. The flood swept away many belongings including the bank pass book, debit card and other identification documents of S. Sangeetha, 28, who lives in Anumandai village in...

-DNA Indian municipalities can adopt the European Union model to achieve zero landfill disposal Budapest: Today, streets and corners littered with garbage are a common sight in almost every Indian city. What’s more, when municipalities actually pick up the trash, they dump it directly in landfills. Until a few months ago when I moved to Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, I thought this situation was inevitable. Then, I travelled to...

-PTI Funding of political parties in the country is “loosely governed” under the law and almost 80 per cent of their total funds escape “scrutiny” owing to lack of required laws in this regard, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi said here on Tuesday. Zaidi, while addressing a global conference on the influence of Money Power in the electoral process, said it was high time that electoral reforms, which entail enactment of...

-Civil Society Online Bhubaneswar: Laxman Goud, a 35-year-old farmer in Thakurpalli village in Komna block of Nuapada district of Odisha, used to lead a very simple life. He was a devoted follower of Mahima Dharma, a subaltern religion practised by underprivileged castes in Odisha. One morning, he took his life in desperation. He couldn’t repay Rs 19,000 he had borrowed from a local moneylender at 36 per cent interest. Goud had invested...

Agricultural insurance is supposed to protect farmers from financial hardships and risks when crop losses and damage takes place due to extreme weather events such as drought, cyclone, hailstorms, flood etc. However, in reality this does not hold true in India. Due to the failure of crop insurance schemes in India, there has been a deepening of agrarian crisis and rural distress in the recent times, particularly in the backdrop of...