-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 Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre has told the Supreme Court that SC/ST government employees were automatically entitled for quota in promotions and reiterated the need for reconsideration of the M Nagraj judgment, saying collection of data to determine their backwardness was neither feasible nor desirable. Filing its written note on the matter on Tuesday, the Centre said a community was added to the list of Scheduled Castes after...

-The Time of India NEW DELHI: India is greying faster than previously projected, even though it fares better than other Saarc countries and China. The government has disclosed that the number of people above 60 will rise to around 340 million by 2050. The number, revealed by junior minister for health Anupriya Patel in the Lok Sabha, is higher than projections made by the United Nations (UN) and other agencies, which also...

-The Times of India GUWAHATI: With the national elections just a year away, the government on Saturday announced a mega investment and connectivity programme for the north-eastern states, entailing inflow of nearly Rs 10,000 crore through over 400 programmes expected to be rolled out in the next four years. The investments relate to enhancing the telecom infrastructure in the state, apart from setting up BPOs, boosting electronics manufacturing, giving a push to...

-The Times of India JAIPUR: The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has shot off a letter to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to discourage states, particularly Rajasthan, from diluting the laws governing temporary suspension of telecom services and issuing orders for shutdown of internet and data services. In its letter dated August 8, the representative body for telecom service providers said that, as per rules, the direction to suspend internet services...