-The Hindustan Times The sorry plight of thousands of small savers duped by a deposit-collecting firm in West Bengal is, perhaps, symptomatic of a wider malaise that runs deep in the Indian economy. What if a company asked you to invest Rs. 200,000 and promised to give you Rs. 8,000 a month for five years and a swanky sedan at the end of the fifth year? What if a company asked...

-Live Mint The experience of Kerala and Tripura shows how panchayati raj can help in the empowerment of women Chulubari (Tripura)/Kanjikuzhy (Kerala): Her relatives warned Hena Das, a resident of Chulubari in Tripura, against taking up political office because it wasn't "meant for women". Das disregarded the warnings. Two years on, she has no regrets. She also has no male colleagues; her fellow representatives on the board of an 12-member panchayat are all...

-The Times of India All coal blocks distributed between 1993 and 2008 were done in an unauthorized manner and allotment of all mines where production is yet to start should be cancelled, the Standing Committee on Coal and Steel has said in its latest report that is slated to be tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. The committee, headed by Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee, has also recommended that all "personnel" who have...

-Live Mint West Bengal chief minister dashes Saradha depositors' hopes of any immediate state-assisted recovery Kolkata: What has gone, has gone," West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee told depositors of the Saradha Group, dashing their hopes of any immediate state-assisted recovery of dues from the floundering units of the group that collected the Money. Banerjee launched two separate investigations and promised to introduce a new law to deal firmly with fraudulent financial...

-PTI Srinagar: The Jammu & Kashmir Police on Tuesday detained Saradha group chairman & managing director Sudipto Sen and a director of the company from Sonamarg, where they had fled after their Calcutta-based chit fund business collapsed last week leaving thousands of depositors and agents stranded. "We have detained Sudipto Sen and Debjani Mukherjee, chairman-cum-managing director and a director of the Saradha group respectively, and Arvind from Sonamarg," the inspector general of...