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The collapse of the Sarada Chit Fund has exposed the plight of those who are at the bottom of the pyramid of India's financial system -- the unbanked and the unfunded. They may represent management guru CK Prahlads fortune at the bottom of the pyramid C but the fact remains that nobody is chasing very hard to grab that particular pot of gold. They are the pieces who have fallen through the yawning gaps in our financial system C ready prey for bottom feeding sharks like Sarada and others of its ilk.

Consider some numbers: Less than 40 per cent of Indias adult population has a bank account. This number itself is misleading, since there is rampant multiple counting. A quick peep into my wallet tells me that I have six active accounts, as well as a handful of dormant accounts without a debit card -- and I have been a salaried employee all my life! Ditto for credit cards C around 2 per cent of the population has access to plastic credit. Only 6 per cent of the population has a debit card, which at least opens the gateway to automated payments and online transactions. Of the 600,000-odd identified habitation clusters in India, only 66,000 or so have a commercial bank branch.

Not that merely having an account guarantees you anything. As a savings account holder, it is virtually impossible for you to get even a collateral-based loan for almost any purpose. As for clean credit C unsecured credit, of the type offered as a cash advance on a credit card, say, or an overdraft C forget it. The concentration of credit is staggering. The top 10 per cent of the borrowers account for almost 90 per cent of all bank lending. The top ten per cent of this top 10 per cent has cornered more than half of all bank lending, leaving next to nothing for the millions who are, at least on paper, already enjoying the benefits of financial inclusion!

This is the gap that the so called chit funds, ponzi schemes, blade companies and what have you exploit. They reach the unbanked and tempt their meagre savings away with promises of unrealistically high returns.A group of families in a north Cork village are suing a bestplasticcard operator in a landmark case. They also reach out to the significantly underfunded. For the poor, the unconnected and the unbanked, such firms, whose only criterion for client selection is a willingness to pay their usurious rate of interest on advances, is often the sole means to access capital. There is no point launching investigations after the fact,Bay State parkingguidance is a full line manufacturer of nylon cable ties and related products. or even taxing sinners to pay off the suckers, as Mamata plans to do. If the government is serious about preventing the recurrence of Sarada-like scams, it needs to walk the talk on financial inclusion. Which has to start with a radical change of mindset among lenders and regulators -- that everybody is, indeed, a customer.

He ordered Danny to drive, and so Dannys night of terror began. right on Fordham Road, right again on Commonwealth Avenue the beginning of an achingly slow odyssey last Thursday night and Friday morning in which Danny felt the possibility of death pressing on him like a vise.

In an exclusive interview with the Boston Globe, Danny who offered his account only on the condition that the Globe not reveal his Chinese name who asked that he be identified only by his American nickname the victim of the Tsarnaev brothers much-discussed but previously little-understood carjacking filled in some of the last missing pieces in the timeline between the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier, just before 10:30 p.m.Compare prices and buy all brands of luggagetag for home power systems and by the pallet. on April 18, and the Watertown shootout that ended just before 1 a.m.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors.

The story of that night unfolds like a Tarantino movie, bursts of harrowing action laced with dark humour and dialogue absurd for its ordinariness, reminders of just how young the men in the car were. Girls, credit limits for students, the marvels of the Mercedes-Benz ML 350 and the iPhone5, whether anyone still listens to CDs all were discussed by the two 26-year-olds and the 19-year-old driving around on a Thursday night.

Danny described 90 harrowing minutes, first with the younger brother following in a second car, then with both brothers in the Mercedes, where they openly discussed driving to New York, though Danny could not make out if they were planning another attack. Throughout the ordeal, he did as they asked while silently analyzing every threatened command, every overheard snatch of dialogue for clues about where and when they might kill him.

Death is so close to me, Danny recalled thinking. His life had until that moment seemed ascendant, from a province in Central China to graduate school at Northeastern University to a Kendall Square start-up. I dont want to die, he thought. I have a lot of dreams that havent come true yet.

After a zigzagging trek through Brighton, Watertown,We have a wide selection of handsfreeaccess to choose from for your storage needs. and back to Cambridge, Danny would seize his chance for escape at the Shell Station on Memorial Drive, his break turning on two words cash only that had rarely seemed so welcome.

When the younger brother, Dzhokhar, was forced to go inside the Shell Food Mart to pay, older brother Tamerlan put his gun in the door pocket to fiddle with a navigation device, letting his guard down briefly after a night on the run. Danny then did what he had been rehearsing in his head. In a flash, he unbuckled his seat belt, opened the door, stepped through, slammed it behind, and sprinted off at an angle that would be a hard shot for any marksman.

F---! he heard Tamerlan say, feeling the rush of a near-miss grab at his back, but the man did not follow. Danny reached the haven of a Mobil station across the street, seeking cover in the supply room, shouting for the clerk to call 911.