Chanda Kochhar

This year’s Union Budget is a pragmatic exercise at growth and stability in the backdrop of the challenging year gone by and the broad consensus needed for various policy measures. It goes further to set a direction for fiscal consolidation to ensure long term stability and sustainability.

The finance minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, on Friday announced in his Budget speech that the Mic-rofinance Institutions (Dev-elopment and Regulation) Bill will be introduced in the current session of Parliament.
We welcome Mr Mukh-erjee’s announcement as it would soon end all supply side issues of the MFI sector and restore credit options for rural low inco-me group from the formal sector. The MFI bill upon passage will override the AP MFI Act and pave the way for MFIs resuming len-ding and collections in AP.

The annually awaited Budget circus has come and gone. As usual we had people glued to their televisions, palmtops, laptops, tablets and chairs all day expecting the budget to wave like a magic wand and fulfill all their wishes.

Grappling with a rebellion within the Congress, Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna on Friday met party president Sonia Gandhi who also discussed strategies with other party leaders to defuse the crisis in the hill state.

Former chief minister and senior Congress leader Ajit Jogi, who has been living in a wheelchair after a near fatal road accident in 2004, is set to begin a new innings in his life.

Despite his busy schedule, Uttar Pradesh chief minister-designate Akhilesh Singh Yadav has found time to receive greetings and share pleasantries with his close friends and college mates from Mysore on the eve of swearing-in ceremony at his Vikramaditya Marg residence in Lucknow.

The 570 descendants of the Nawabs of Tonk in Rajasthan have reason to smile. The state government has given them a big raise in their monthly family allowances, increasing the amount from Rs 100 to Rs 1,000 per month. “The amount is immaterial here, it is a matter of pride for us as it connects us to our heritage,” said Aslam Ali Khan, 70,a descendant of the Tonk royals.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, a reference book in homes and libraries worldwide, will stop publishing the print edition for the first time in 244 years and shift focus to digital versions.

A 2002-batch IPS Chhattisgarh IPS officer, Bilaspur SP Rahul Sharma, on Monday allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself with his service revolver, the police said.

A week after the unexpected poll debacle in Punjab, voices are growing within the state Congress for a change of leadership.