-The Hindu EC expresses "serious concern about the cursory manner in which the issue has been dealt with" The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has turned down the Election Commission’s request to enhance the cash withdrawal limit for nominated candidates in the five poll-bound States, from Rs. 24,000 to Rs. 2 lakh per week, till the declaration of results on March 11. Asking the RBI to reconsider, the EC on Saturday again wrote...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: One in almost every five cases in consumer forums is related to the insurance sector, followed by complaints relating to the housing and Banking sectors, according to a sample analysis done by the consumer affairs ministry. The latest data shared by the ministry with the state governments recently show that at present about 4.15 lakh cases are pending before different consumer forums, nearly three-fourth of them...

-PTI Mumbai: Defying the impact of the note-Ban which has yanked down consumer sentiment, rural wages have been on a steady upward spiral, rising by 7.3 per cent in November, suggesting a likely release of pent-up demand after demonetisation, says a report. “Nominal rural agricultural wages rose to 7.3 per cent year-on-year in November, from 6.9 per cent in October, remaining well above the previous 12-month average of 4.8 per cent,” Japanese...

-Village Square High levels of arsenic in the water supply is afflicting many villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh but the government hasn’t been able to design and implement any program to contain the menace Ballia (Uttar Pradesh): Ekawana Rajpur is a village in Belhari administrative block along the Banks of the Ganga and 16km from Ballia town in eastern Uttar Pradesh where villagers commonly suffer from afflictions such as itchy skin lesions,...

-PTI AHMEDABAD: A differently-abled farmer from Gujarat's arid Banaskantha district has inspired several others to make the best use of their farmland by planting pomegranate. Genabhai Patel (52), a pomegranate farmer from Sarkari Goliya village in Lakhani taluka of the district, has polio in both legs but he did not let it become a hurdle. Instead, he experimented with farm practices involving drip irrigation to produce pomegranate in the highly arid and...