Rural India

Rural cleanliness: UP govt to train village officials, sanitation workers

To ensure cleanliness in villages, the Uttar Pradesh government will provide necessary training to local functionaries and sanitation workers, an official said on Tuesday. The official said around 83,000 people, including village pradhans, block motivators and panchayat assistants, will be provided training in batches in 20 District Panchayat Resource Centres and the Panchayati Raj Training Institute in Lucknow. In a statement, Additional Chief Secretary of Panchayati Raj Manoj Kumar said that 25,145 gram panchayats will be covered in the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Rural) in this financial year. "Under this, a target has been set to cover 43,242 revenue villages. A number of campaigns will be launched to manage solid and liquid wastes, in addition to maintaining the achievements made in these villages during the first phase of the mission," Kumar said. He said that six master trainers have been posted at every training centre. These master trainers have recently be

Women, villages and the less affluent drive internet growth in rural India

The message from Nielsen's latest India Internet Report is that media planners need to get out of the reach game and get more creative to leverage the new type of audiences coming online

Two-thirds of NTC consumers were from semi-urban areas in 2021: Report

More than two-third of the new to credit customers in India hailed from the rural and semi-urban areas in 2021, according to a credit information company. Women, farmers and youth lead the charge on the New To Credit (NTC) customer addition front, which is desirable from a financial inclusion perspective, Transunion Cibil said on Tuesday. In 2021, the total number of NTC customers stood at 35 million while the January-September 2022 period saw 31 million additions, it said in a report. NTC consumers are ones with no prior credit history on their credit bureau file who opened their first-ever, traditional credit product such as a consumer durable loan, personal loan, agricultural loan, two-wheeler, gold loan or home loan. More than a fourth of the NTC customers in the first nine months of 2022 started their credit journey by availing a consumer durable loan, followed by 16 per cent who took an agricultural loan and 13 per cent availed personal loans, it said. Among the NTC consumer

Urban India leaves rural way behind as vaccinations surge 44% nationwide

This is despite the prevalence of a much larger population in the country's villages and a greater number of vaccination centres in these areas, compared to urban

Rural demand for FMCG products nears positive territory in December

Overall demand from rural areas declined 0.2 per cent on a month-on-month basis in December while it was down 17 per cent in November, according to Bizom's data

Rural, semi-rural areas are high on priority of Modi govt: Jitendra Singh

Singh highlighted that over the last 8 years, PM Modi's welfare schemes reached the neediest without any vote bank consideration

Financial literacy poor across urban, rural population: RBI survey

The survey was based on three parameters namely, financial knowledge, attitude and behaviour. On a total score of 21, the average urban and rural scores were 11.7

Declining demand for jobs under MGNREGA, but workers await pending payments

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while addressing the Lower House of Parliament on December 14 this year, claimed that the demand for work under MGNREGA is on the wane

Private companies lap up Esri's GIS software for multiple uses

Government departments have used it to build village land records, track rural roads, and manage water resources

Women, rural poor, unemployed lagging due to digital divide: Oxfam India

The report revealed a digital divide based on employment status, where 95% of the salaried permanent workers have a phone whereas only 50% of the unemployed have a phone in 2021

Rural distress harming MSMEs, pulling down manufacturing: Economists

Government's PLI schemes can help manufacturing and reduce import dependence in some sectors, say some experts

Absence of incentives, poor awareness hobble rural WiFi scheme PM-WANI

Scheme central to government's plans to create up to 10 mn public WiFi hotspots by Dec

Centre to review spending pattern of rural job scheme ahead of Budget

The October work demand under the scheme, according to the MGNREGS website, is the lowest in a month so far in this financial year

Social safety net product Bima Vistaar being developed for Bima Sugam

The regulator last month had formed a 24-member committee, headed by Devasia, to develop an affordable, accessible and comprehensive cover - Bima Vistaar -- for rural population

Mobile user base dips first time in 7 months, shrinks by 3.6 mn in Sept

Rural India saw subscriptions fall by 3.7 million. Urban barely offset that with a rise of 540,000

India may boost rural spending by 50% next year to spur jobs, housing

India may increase rural spending by nearly 50% to 2 trillion rupees ($24.51 billion) next fiscal year, as the country seeks to boost jobs

Most of BSNL's 125,000 new 4G towers to come up in rural areas

This is to shake off its image of a lagging government service, multiple officials added

Finance ministry likely to give additional Rs 25,000 crore for MGNREGS

But asks rural development ministry to identify and remove inefficiencies

The irrelevance of regional rural banks

Scope of their survival is diminishing. Even as the overall business of rural financial institutions has generally been looking up, they are struggling to scale up business volumes

Rural pain pushes India's unemployment rate up to 7.7% in October: CMIE

The report said the decline in employment was mostly in rural India and mainly in non-agricultural rural India and the daily wage labourer segment was the most hit as it shrunk by nearly 15 million