In an effort to educate children in urban slums and remote rural areas, World Bank approved $1.5 billion for Indian schools. Though this is a huge investment in education sector for the World Bank, it is still a small amount to reach all the poor children in India. The loan will help Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, a government program to provide education among young children. This amount is expected to change the lives of many poor families who have never sent their children to school and who are excluded both traditionally and economically.

Sam Carson, World Bank education specialist said that, “the latest funding was the third in a series of loans to support the government’s program”. He also voiced his concern regarding the high drop out rate of these children. Since its launch in 2002, school enrollments have increased by 57 million to 192 million between 2003 and 2009. But the number of children who left school fell to 8.1 million from 25 million in the same period. High drop-out rate is a cause for concern and the government should take appropriate measures to resolve it. Over 50 percent of the money allocated will be used over a period of three years to improve student learning, such as teacher training, remedial education, and free textbooks and for other learning materials.

Car sales crossed over 1.5 lakh in February an increase of 33 percent compared to last year. Fear of withdrawal of stimulus leading to higher taxes, increase in auto interest rates, new emission norms which will further increase car prices are some of the factors which caused the car sales to peak in February. Maruti Suzuki and Hyundai Motor’s posted highest domestic sales in the month of February. In the past 11 months the carmakers reported a 25 percent increase in sales. Around 13.7 lakh vehicles were sold in the last 11 months.

Carmakers have already hiked their priced by 4 percent and is expected to increase further by another 2 to 4 percent because of the emission norms. With the increase in interest rates and recent petrol hike the demand is expected to be moderate in the coming months. The demand is expected from rural areas and other smaller cities.

Driven by low tariff plans the telephone subscriber’s base rose from 525.65 million in October, registering a growth rate of 3.34 per cent, to 543.20 million in November. The wireless subscription grew by 3.61 percent to 506.04 million in November from 488.40 million in October. In November, the GSM operators added 11.64 million new users with Bharti Airtel adding 2.8 million subscribers. Tata Teleservices is leading with 3.3 million additional subscriptions and RCom added 2.2 million users in November.

Stiff competition does not deter new entrants into the market as the potential for growth is very high especially in the rural areas. Uninor, one of the latest entrants in the Indian telecom market, launched their services this month simultaneously in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand. Uninor, a joint venture between Unitech Wireless and the Norwegian telecom major Telenor ASA, hopes to break even in three years time. The company has set up 2, 25,000 sale points and appointed close to 1,000 exclusive distributors throughout the country.

India has been shining bright on the world map however, the conditions in the rural areas of the country can still only be described as abysmal. While people in the urban areas enjoy world class facilities, almost 73% of rural India is yet to get access to formal avenues of financial credit. As a result of this, even today many in the rural parts of the country still fall prey to the archaic money lending system where the interest rates are extremely unreasonable.

Banks continue to play an increasingly vital role in paving India’s path to becoming an Asian superpower. However, there needs to be presence of these formal sources of credit in the rural parts of the country so that the poor are able to free themselves from the vicious circle of interest and repayment of the principal.