Experts show how electricity for poor people is possible Is electricity for all a pipe dream? Should we forget about electricity for all until we are able to provide more basic amenities like drinking water, nutritious food, education and healthcare?   India is home to the largest number of people without electricity. Half of Indian households do not have access to power, which constitute a third of the world's population without electricity. Though...

What are the poor most concerned about? After meeting families in 175 Indian villages in the last decade, Anirudh Krishna, says the poor's greatest worry is their children's future. With a manner of a school teacher, Professor Krishna, who teaches at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in the US, has led a team meeting poor families to find out why poverty persists. The research also includes...

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) after reaching a saturation point in sanctioning of works like digging of nadis' (small water reservoirs), making gravel roads and plantations etc, is now focusing on improving the economic standard of the SC/ST and those in the Below Poverty Line' (BPL) category. Till now the works undertaken in the rural employment scheme were aimed at public utility, however the gram panchayats covered...

Suffering from extreme poverty and male oppression, the women of Darkali village in Madhya Pradesh, India, are now able to feed their families through employment under the MGNREGS. The wages obtained under the Scheme help them augment the family resource base. Jashmabai is working under the punishing sun on an earthen dam in her village of Darkali, in Madhya Pradesh's Alirajpur district, being built under the government-funded Mahatma Gandhi National Rural...

Today, "social entrepreneurship" has become an important development to help some of the poorest groups in the world like the rickshaw pullers in India. Colorfully adorned cycle rickshaws have long been a part of India's landscapes. These hardworking yet environmentally friendly rickshaw operators can navigate busy urban streets and rural country roads with the same ease. But they are all but invisible to their passengers as they barely subsist above the...