Nirmal Om newsline

Press Release UN Women and Government of Odisha to promote Gender Responsive Governance Date: Bhubaneswar, 23 June   (Revised / updated on 24 June  2015)   The Panchayati Raj Department, Government of Odisha and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today to strengthen capacities of governance institutions to ensure gender concerns are embedded in the design and implementation of legislation, policies, and programmes. Two pilot districts - Dhenkanal and Mayurbhanj – have been selected for the project. It will cover 34 blocks and 580 Gram Panchayats. The project will lead to better outcomes for women, resulting from improved access to their rights and entitlements through Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs).  The State Institute for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Odisha will be the implementing agency for the project.  “The pr...

Weekend festival to launch Harlech’s new £2 million holiday home park Mumbai, 22 nd  June, 2016:  The organisers of the inaugural Harlech Caravan and Lodge Festival from July 22-24 are hoping to attract thousands of visitors to the seaside resort. The festival, which will include a range of family entertainment, has been organised to officially launch a new £2 million caravan holiday home park in the town. Castle View Holiday Home Park occupies a prime position, nestling between the town and its beautiful, sandy beach with Harlech Castle as a majestic backdrop and with Royal St David’s Golf Club and Harlech Railway Station nearby. The park has pitches for 60 caravan holiday homes and is already proving popular with owners from Shropshire, the West Midlands and North West England. Visitors to the festival, which is being held on the adjacent Min-y-Don Holiday Park, will be treated to live music, a knights battle re-enactment and a programme of events taki...

  President's Message " The American oil tycoon and the richest industrialist in 50s, J. Paul Getty once famously remarked, ‘if you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem’. The moral of the famous one liner is that banks are insensitive to smaller borrowers but are ready to bend backward and break any rule to please for the larger borrowers. (The NPAs of the Indian PSU banks give you enough cues). That is why one needs market regulators. Sadly, in India the regulator of banks, the RBI, also has been largely indifferent to MSME needs and during in recent years it has become even more so. FISME has been critical of RBI’s Special Mention Account (SMA) scheme which requires banks to notify even possibility of default on loan instalment as SMA in the case of former, and the mandatory rating scheme through a handful rating agencies if the exposure is over 5 crore, in the case of latter. The RBI’s insis...