Take a host of initiatives to ramp up presence in rural markets. With increased focus on directing funds towards agriculture, banks are confident of meeting their farm sector lending targets this financial year. “We had 60 rural branches last year and will take it to 125 by next month. This will give a major fillip to the agri lending business,” said S Chakrabarthy, deputy managing director, Axis Bank. According to the Trend and...

The promise of the FRA remains largely unfulfilled, says a committee set up by the Ministries of Environment and Forests and Tribal Affairs. IT seems hard for a government used to controlling most of India's common lands to let go of them. Even though it has passed a law mandating more decentralised governance of forests, the government itself is proving to be the biggest obstacle in its implementation. Other than in...

The Supreme Court will hear in open court on February 28 the curative petition filed by the Union government seeking enhancement of compensation of $470 million for Bhopal gas victims. The petition said the compensation, determined by the Supreme Court in 1989, was arrived at on the basis of assumptions of truth unrelated to realities. A five-judge Bench comprising Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justices Altamas Kabir, R.V. Raveendran, B. Sudershan...

The farmers in the state, who had lost their crops to the recent rain and hailstorm, may not get any compensation from the present weather-based insurance scheme in the state as hailstorm is not covered under the policy. According to sources, the state has adopted the weather-based insurance in which the compensation is calculated on the basic parameters of temperature, rainfall and moisture levels. These parameters could be measured by...

The Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC) has pocketed over Rs 1 crore by allowing pharma companies to conduct clinical trials of drugs on its patients — victims of the gas disaster of 1984. Shockingly, out of the 7 trials carried out in the hospital since 2004, only one was inspected or monitored by the government watchdog Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). This was revealed in response to...