The Reserve Bank of India, RBI, and the finance ministry seem to have differences on the way banks should go about ensuring financial inclusion. While both the regulator and the ministry are passionate about providing banking services at low cost to the disadvantaged, a difference of opinion between the two has confused bankers. Recently, the finance ministry told banks that every business correspondent outlet should be converted into an ultra-small branch....
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Government sets up panel to review poverty line
-IANS The government on Thursday set up a technical panel to review the Tendulkar Committee methodology for deciding the poverty line for which it has under increasing criticism in recent months. The technical group panel headed by the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council Chairman C. Rangarajan will "revisit the methodology for estimation of the poverty and identification of the poor," the Planning Commission said in a statement. Based on the methodologies suggested by...
More »The withering of age-Harsh Mander
In a Bangladeshi folk story, a disabled grandfather is carried by his son in a basket, to be abandoned in the forest. On seeing this, the grandson calls out, 'Father, please be sure to bring back the basket. I will need it when you grow old'. Three thousand ageing men and women gathered in Delhi in the blazing midsummer heat to demand a universal pension for all aged people, not...
More »The austerity of the affluent-P Sainath
A Rural Indian spending Rs. 22.50 a day would not be considered poor by a Planning Commission whose Deputy Chairman's foreign trips between May and October last year cost a daily average of Rs. 2.02 lakh Pranab Mukherjee's stirring call for austerity tugs at the national tear ducts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pleaded for it in the past and watched his flock embrace it creatively. With the Finance Ministry even...
More »Longer course proposal for MBBS
-The Telegraph Undergraduate medical students across India may need to spend more time in rural areas under a proposal being examined by the Medical Council of India that may extend the duration of the five- and-a-half-year MBBS course. The Medical Council of India (MCI) in consultation with the Union health ministry is examining the proposal to add several months to the current three-month rural training which is mandatory during MBBS internship, said...
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