MICROFINANCE is an example of something that is sadly all too rare: an anti-poverty tool that usually at least breaks even. If you make small, uncollateralised business loans to groups of poor women, they almost always repay them on time. It has grown rapidly in many countries, not least Bangladesh and India. With nearly 30m clients each, these are now the world’s biggest markets for microfinance. Yet the industry has...
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Understanding the Puzzling Nature of Poverty by Akash Kapur
Rahul Gandhi, the general secretary of India’s Congress party, often says that there exist “two Indias” — one of the rich, and one of the poor. Those two Indias were in evidence a couple of weeks ago, when closely timed events on opposite sides of the planet brought into relief the deep divides that in many ways define this country. In Mumbai on Nov. 7, President Barack Obama told a group of...
More »Hunger alarm by TK Rajalakshmi
The Global Hunger Index report paints a gloomy picture of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. WITH the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals just five years away, the 2010 Global Hunger Index report prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) paints a gloomy picture of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Some 29 countries in these regions, it says, have levels of hunger that are alarming or extremely alarming....
More »Little on the plate by Milind Murugkar
Food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is being praised in some quarters for daring to take a politically incorrect position. In a sharp disagreement with the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council's (NAC) proposal to supply subsidised food to 75% of the population, Pawar has pointed out two flaws in the proposal: first, that it is unaffordable and second that it is near impossible to procure and store the required food...
More »New loan sharks by S Nagesh Kumar
The rural poor in Andhra Pradesh, a State showcased as a model for SHG-bank linkage, are caught in the vortex of microfinance. WITHIN a decade of their coming into operation, microfinance institutions (MFIs) have dealt a serious blow to the economy and the well-being of thousands of families in rural Andhra Pradesh. Harassment by their collection agents has allegedly driven at least 60 borrowers to death, and the number is...
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