The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has started investigating the Rs 300-crore fraud by Citibank manager Shivraj Puri after receiving a report from the bank. Officials at Citibank said the RBI had been regularly updated on its internal investigations since the fraud came to light. “We have shared all the details with the RBI. The RBI will now investigate the matter further,” the Citibank official said. An RBI spokesperson confirmed that the probe...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGA) has been in news mainly due to corruption or inefficiency. The country has spent close to Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal but a large number of urban middle class people and opinion leaders don’t know what to make of it. Cynicism apart, the rights-based scheme has proved to be a game-changer in rural India despite mixed success. The scheme has been relatively...

CBI feels constrained by need to get consent of States to probe offences in their jurisdictions Draft envisages panel for appointment of CBI Director as laid down by Supreme Court Often under attack from the Opposition parties who accuse the government of the day of misusing it, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has urged the government to replace the outdated pre-independence era Delhi Special Police Establishment Act that governs its functioning...

Just as microcredit on its own does not represent full financial inclusion, it is our view that neither do business correspondent accounts In a country of 1.2 billion individuals, if we exclude children, we should at least have 900 million bank account holders before we can say the job of basic inclusion in banking is complete. No matter how we count, however, the actual number of bank account holders do not...

Primarily to address issues related to spending and implementation India’s apex planning body is drawing up a set of proposed reforms for the country’s flagship rural job guarantee programme, primarily to address issues related to spending and implementation. The changes proposed under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) will be sent to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by the end of this month for consideration, said Mihir Shah, member, Planning...