`Financial Inclusion' as defined by the committee of financial inclusion is the process of ensuring access to financial services and timely and adequate credit, where needed by vulnerable groups, such as weaker sections and lower income groups at an affordable cost. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has selected Baikunthpur village in Narayanpur block of Mirzapur district to provide banking services to the villagers under its financial inclusion programme. The programme...

The city's famous potters' colony of Kumartuli is facing an acute shortage of hands to sculpt Durga Puja idols. Behind this labour scarcity is an unlikely culprit - the rural jobs scheme which has induced hundreds to stay back in their villages. Costs of organising Durga Puja have gone up this year as more has to be shelled out on labour and raw material - in some cases jumping almost 50...

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Sunday demanded the central government declare the drought in West Bengal a national calamity and provide subsidies for writing off crop loans taken in the kharif season. With 11 of the 18 districts in the state already declared drought-affected, the water level has been receding in most of the south Bengal districts, making the peasants doubtful about how much proportion of the harvest can be...

Inefficiency, the global financial meltdown and rising food prices have conspired to reverse progress made on poverty and hunger Head out of Delhi, across the fetid Yamuna river, with the tourist sites behind you and the northern Indian plains in front of you. Go past the new, luxury flats built for the Commonwealth Games, turn right and follow the lines of the new metro and then plunge left, avoiding the chaotic...

The Union government plans to empower the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), which currently oversees the work of state agencies and state-owned companies, to investigate complaints against its flagship rural jobs scheme. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) promises 100 days of annual work to one member of every rural household. CVC currently has to route complaints about irregularities in the scheme’s execution to a state chief secretary or the...