-The Indian Express Farmers in worst-hit Beed had hoped that a good harvest this year would help them repay loans. Beed (Maharashtra): Radhabai, a 30-year-old daily wager from Ekdara village of Beed district, was plucking cotton on March 8 when the overcast sky opened up. Heavy rain with tennis ball-sized hailstones forced her to take shelter under a tree. "Heavy wind dislodged a branch of the tree that fell on her head....

-The New York Times BOLLIKUNTA, India - Latha Reddy Musukula was making tea on a recent morning when she spotted the money lenders walking down the dirt path toward her house. They came in a phalanx of 15 men, by her estimate. She knew their faces, because they had walked down the path before. After each visit, her husband, a farmer named Veera Reddy, sank deeper into silence, frozen by some terror...

-The Indian Express For the Bharatiya Mahila Bank, the country's first pan-India national women's bank, it is a humble rural cooperative women's venture in Maharashtra that has provided the critical input to succeed: How to lend to women who do not have collateral to back their loans. Chetna V Sinha, founder and chairperson of Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank, explained that this is the prime weakness in giving loans to women. The...

-Live Mint/ Bloomberg Conflicts between industry and farmers getting worse as water becomes more and more scarce Sachin Ingale slipped out of his family's two-room, white-painted mud hut about 4pm and walked into their farm field where the 22-year-old took a deep swig of pesticide from a plastic bottle. He died later that evening. Four months later, the mercury is pushing 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in his village in...

-The Hindu Business Line There can be no denying the need for a legal framework to ensure that the likes of Saradha do not take the entire financial system for a ride. But that said, there will always be greedy investors, willing to be taken in by the tall promises of unscrupulous operators. The latter's task is made easier by loopholes in the law. Hence, Ponzi operators used the legal loopholes...