-Outlook India Sandeep Chachra is Executive Director, ActionAid Association and Co-chair of the World Urban Campaign, UN-Habitat. He discusses and expresses views of the ground reality of the success behind Punjab's Agriculture Industry. "Microfinance companies are breaking our backs.  Many women in our block have taken loans that they can't repay.  During COVID, these loans have swelled up, and the company agents threaten us, take away our belongings, our gas cylinders.  I...

-Business Standard Borrower cannot be charged any amount not been explicitly mentioned in a factsheet, says regulator. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday released its final guidelines for Microfinance loans, lifting an interest cap and allowing companies to have a board-approved policy to price for such lending. The RBI will continue checking that microfinance institutions do not charge usurious rates. The regulator said each entity has to disclose pricing related information...

-SabrangIndia.in The group of leading womens’ organisations write open letter to PM Modi; will soon hold nationwide protests against the “ruthlessness exhibited by the Union government” National women’s organisations have written an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding that the government stop repressing the farmers’ legitimate and peaceful protests immediately. They have asked that all cases imposed on the struggling farmers and leaders of the farmers’ organisations be withdrawn and...

-Newsclick.in Earlier, the government stopped the release of the NSSO report on unemployment for 2017-18 and the sixth Labour Bureau annual employment-unemployment survey. Both showed an unprecedented rise in job losses. New Delhi: For the third time, the Narendra Modi government has stopped the release of government data on jobs created in the country before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The Indian Express reported on March 14, 2019 that a survey by the...

-The Hindu Business Line Roy tracks how microfinance, despite its blemishes, has empowered the unbanked in the country For the poor in rural India, till not very long ago, credit meant the unscrupulous mahajans who roamed the villages with wads of cash. Dime a dozen Bollywood movies had depicted the wily moneylender who not just ripped off the hapless creditors, but who was also cruel enough to grab their movable and immovable...