Apropos Madhukar’s post on available information on the functioning of state legislatures, data on the number of days State Assemblies shows a mixed trend over the 2000 to 2010 period. However, most states uniformly under perform when it comes to number of days of sitting. (Spreadsheet with relevant data here) As with Parliament, state assemblies are convened at the will of the executive. In comparison to the Lok Sabha, the state assemblies perform miserably. In any given year, most state assemblies do not sit for even half the number of the days clocked by the Lok Sabha.
The Andhra Pradesh government issued an Ordinance on October 15, 2010, which stipulated conditions for the microfinance activities in the State. This Ordinance was ratified two months later on December 15, 2010 by the lower house of the Andhra Pradesh assembly. The key features of the Bill are: •All MFIs should be registered with the district authority. •No person should be a member of more than one SHG. •All MFIs shall make public the rate of interest charged by them on the loans extended. •There would be a penalty on the use of coercive action by the MFIs. •Any person who contravenes any provision of the Ordinance shall be punishable with imprisonment for a period of 6 months or a fine up to the amount of Rs 10,000, or both. The State assembly accepted most of the features from the earlier Ordinance in the Bill. However, the demand for a cap on the interest rates charged by the MFIs for the loans extended to the SHGs was rejected during the ratification.
