Month: February 2014
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with the standing committee rejecting the mfi bill, old questions come back to haunt MFIs
and, after a long time, i write again on india’s search for regulatory mechanism for microfinance. With the Standing Committee on Finance rejecting the latest avatar of the microfinance bill, old questions about the microfinance sector have resurfaced. Since 2010, when the controversial Andhra Pradesh ordinance made it all but impossible for Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) […]
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upa1 vs upa2
and so, upa2 presented its final budget – a vote on account – yesterday. and i wrote this quick little story comparing the developmental efforts of upa1 and upa2. In his speech today, Finance Minister P Chidambaram suggested UPA-II has done a good job on social welfare. As statements go, that assertion is not correct. […]
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Why Health Secy Keshav Desiraju Was Transferred
something strange happened in mid-february. the bureaucrat who heads india’s union ministry of health was abruptly transferred. and none of the explanations doing the rounds seemed to make much sense. Why was health secretary Keshav Desiraju transferred? Two days ago, in a statement reproduced by the Press Trust of India, Azad said: “Officers’ and ministers’ […]
Fractured/Earth 