India’s plan to offer unique identity (UID) cards to all citizens will bring a range of banking Services within reach of millions of poor who currently cannot even open a bank account, says a report released on Friday by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is executing the project. Facilities such as microfinance are beyond the reach of many poor people in both towns and villages who do not...

INSIDE his hovel of branches and rags, a grizzled pauper called Badshah Kale keeps a precious object. It is a note, scrawled by a policeman and framed by Mr Kale, proclaiming that he “is not a thief”. For members of his Pardhi tribe, who are among some 60m Indians considered criminal by tradition, this is treasure. Squatting beside Mr Kale, on a turd-strewn wasteland outside Ashti, a village in India’s western...

PUDUCHERRY: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has agreed to extend loan to the territorial administration for constructing additional classrooms and laboratories in government schools. In the near future, 559 classrooms would be constructed in the Union Territory, Chief Minister V. Vaithilingam told the Assembly on Thursday. Replying to the debate on the demands for grants to School Education, the Chief Minister said the bank had consented to extend a...

Several among the 70 known species of mangroves are at high risk of extinction and may disappear well before the next decade if protective measures are not enforced, warns the first global study by U.S. researchers. Eleven of these have been placed on the red list of threatened species kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The study, led by Beth A. Polidoro attached to the Global Marine Species...

CBI has registered more than 200 cases of corruption against government employees, including some senior officials, between January and March this year. “The CBI has registered 2,439 cases under the Prevention of Corruption Act against public servants including senior officers during the last three years (2007, 2008, 2009) and the current year (upto March 2010),” minister of state for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Prithviraj Chavan told Lok Sabha in a...