Regulation in India's microfinance sector aims to address feckless borrowing and reckless lending – but will the new restrictions entrench poverty, rather than end it? One of the many crushing burdens for India's poor bear is debt; unable to make ends meet, they turn to traditional moneylenders. They are willing to extend credit, but at unconscionably high rates – sometimes exceeding 80%, and keeping borrowers in lifelong penury. Popular cinema and...

More than 2,000 farmers and farm widows on Tuesday participated in a day-long hunger-strike in Vidarbha to demand the sacking of union Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, an Activist said. In the agitation called by the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), farmers in Pandharkawada village of Yavatmal district, some 150 km south of here, also said that they would go on an indefinite hunger-strike to press for their demand. "The Supreme Court...

The government refused to budge on the controversial RTI amendments in a meeting with the National Advisory Council on Tuesday. In fact, the wedge between the Sonia Gandhi-led council and the government got deeper with yet another ministry — this time the Union ministry of personnel — defying the thinktank and not entertaining the group's foray into its turf. Earlier the PMO, with the Planning Commission and the food ministry...

Activists opposed to the Posco project in Orissa have decided not to give "an inch of land" for the mega steel venture, even as the BJD government was gearing to start land acquisition over the next two weeks. Posco Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) Chairman Abhaya Sahu said that anti-Posco movement was passing through a very "critical stage" after Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh gave clearance for the project. "We have been fighting...

Nitish calls for balanced view on proposed plant in Chainpur Agitators allege misinformation on perceived hazardous fallouts of proposed plant “17.8 acres of land acquired to set up the factory is cultivable, fertile” Taking note of the mounting public uproar against the proposed asbestos factory at Bishnupur-Chainpur village in Muzaffarpur district, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday said “there was no ban on setting up asbestos factories in India.” Mr. Kumar, however, said...