-Livemint.com The average annual income of agricultural households was Rs 107,172, the National Financial Inclusion Survey 2016-17 shows New Delhi: Rural households have access to banking and have savings but investment levels and pension and insurance coverage remain very low, a financial inclusion survey conducted by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) showed. At the same time, levels of indebtedness were high and nearly equalled annual incomes, according to...

-PTI The financial inclusion drive has resulted in proliferation of bank accounts in rural areas with 88.1 per cent of households having savings accounts, said a survey by Nabard. Incidence of Indebtedness (IOI), which is a proportion of households having outstanding debt on the date of the survey, was 52.5 per cent and 42.8 per cent for agricultural and non-agricultural households, respectively. All India IOI taking rural households together stood at 47.4 per...

  The outcome of a social audit (conducted in April this year) related to the pilot cash transfer programme in the public distribution system (PDS) in Nagri block (Ranchi district) has confirmed that most beneficiaries want back the normal ration system that existed previously. Yet the Jharkhand state government continues with the DBT-based PDS in Nagri block, instead of returning back to the older system, says a press release by the...

-The Hindu Business Line The Ayushman Bharat programme must aim to reverse poverty caused by healthcare expenses The state of India’s healthcare system is somewhat dichotomous — the country is a global supplier of life-saving, affordable and good quality generic medicines, yet lakhs of families are driven into poverty because they are forced to spend much of their earnings and savings on medications to treat chronic and life-threatening diseases. The poor, particularly,...

-Livemint.com It is important to give preference to those approaches that help the poor the most for every rupee spent, no matter how they are labelled Sometimes in life, it is clear that the direct approach isn’t the best one. This is true in many areas, even when it comes to policymaking. Take, as an example, the area of extreme poverty. It seems logical, at first, that the most effective response should...