Publication: Dvara Research

The Indian farmer might earn only INR 30 a day, but there are many of him. According to the 2001 census, the Indian agriculture sector employs about 60 percent of the population, of which farmers comprise 119 million (the rest are agricultural non-owner labourers).

At a fundamental level, it can be argued that internal revenue sources are the most critical funding levers available to a municipality because without effective, predictable generation of internal revenues, it will be impossible to attract new, external sources of funding.

In the previous post of this series, we discussed the status of rural housing and motivations that determine the pattern of construction/upgradation of houses in rural areas.

Even in an environment of great expectations, new RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan’s opening statement was remarkable for its ambition and clarity of purpose

A new paper by Anandi Mani et al in the August issue of Science has a stunning finding – that the cognitive impact of being poor may be equivalent to as much as 13 IQ points.

This note assesses the state of the Indian banking system including its small overall size and high concentration risk, poor indicators of financial inclusion and depth, opaque balance sheets, weak profitability, and highly covariant strategies followed by government-owned banks.

The Reserve Bank of India has published on its website, a discussion paper on Banking Structure in India – The Way Forward which covers the following aspects:

Gary Hustwit’s documentary film, Urbanized (2011), presents an optimistic overture about the future of cities, but is not unchecked with caution.

The fast emerging small business loan (SBL) segment caters to the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and entrepreneurs which typically find it difficult to access funds through traditional sources.

Rosenberg et al. recently published a report on Microcredit Interest Rates and Their Determinants covering the period 2004 to 2011