-The Hindu Business Line Kirana and tea shops are doing better than businesses that involve discretionary spending The Micro-finance industry (MFI) is cursed and blessed at the same time. When there were indications that the micro-finance sector is overheating, with high growth rates, multiple lending and oppressive loan recovery practices, the withdrawal of specified bank notes (SBN) hit them. There were reports of stress from Uttar Pradesh and it appeared that there...

-Scroll.in Inspired by a similar project in Alaska, the state may be the first in India to implement the concept of basic income. Tourist brochures frequently describe Goa as some kind of utopia and the Economic Survey – expected at the end of January, a day before the next Union Budget – could go some way in bridging the gap between imagination and reality. The document will discuss the feasibility of implementing...

-The Telegraph Nagpur: A special investigation team will probe the alleged harassment of poor women borrowers in Maharashtra by loan recovery agents of micro-finance institutions, the state government announced today after month-long street protests and an Assembly debate. Junior home minister Deepak Kesarkar assured an agitated Assembly that the state was considering a law similar to one Andhra Pradesh had enacted in 2011 to regulate the MFIs' lending and loan recovery practices. About...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI | PUNE: Post demonetisation, Manjit Singh, a farmer in Punjab, is grappling with a new financial reality — a queer mix of debit and credit in cashstarved villages where farmers are beginning to get some payments in cheques while their suppliers want currency notes. The vegetable and paddy farmer from Malerkotla is yet to receive Rs 35,000 from commission agents who took his produce. He has bought...

-TheWire.in In the caste and class-unequal region, where a cashless economy is a distant dream, there is some doubtful support for demonetisation, but mostly concrete hostility. Jhansi: Almost a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, the socio-economic fabric of Bundelkhand – one of the poorest regions in central India comprising parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh – is slowly crumbling. The...