-TheWire.in Despite the fact that India's financial inclusion infrastructure has a complex mix of self-help groups and small private banks offering credit to the poor, it has failed to deliver during the pandemic. When the pandemic struck, policymakers and prominent economists across the world called for financial infrastructures to be strengthened. They argued this would support the efficient channeling of relief through cash transfers or cheap loans. India was no exception to...
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Poverty: The direct approach isn't always best -Bjorn Lomborg & Manorama Bakshi
-Livemint.com It is important to give preference to those approaches that help the poor the most for every rupee spent, no matter how they are labelled Sometimes in life, it is clear that the direct approach isn’t the best one. This is true in many areas, even when it comes to policymaking. Take, as an example, the area of extreme poverty. It seems logical, at first, that the most effective response should...
More »Food for thought: do Attappady community kitchens serve the needy? -KA Shaji
-The Hindu Amid criticism from SC/ST panel, experts say project must continue Now in her late twenties, Veeramma Selvan of Thekkekadampara tribal hamlet in Sholayur gram panchayat of Attappady has reasons to believe that her gods have stopped smiling. It was in January last year that she lost her five-month-old, underweight son Balu — her fourth child — allegedly due to milk aspiration. (a medical condition in which the mother's milk goes...
More »Prof. Jan Breman, Professor Emeritus at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, interviewed by G Sampath
-The Hindu Jan Breman takes a long view of the changes he’s seen in India over half a century. Perhaps no other scholar in the social sciences has studied India’s poor and its informal economy as intensively as Jan Breman. The sheer temporal span of his research is mind-boggling. He began his study in south Gujarat 15 years after India’s Independence — in 1962. And he was in south Gujarat in...
More »Collectives help rural women ‘Lean In’ -Nachiket Mor
-The Hindu Women build social capital through the process of regular group meetings and this directly results in a change in their status, both within the home and community In the world of microfinance, women’s collectives have acquired a great deal of prominence globally and are known by various names such as Self Help Groups (SHGs), Joint Liability Groups (JLG), or Village Saving and Loan Associations (VSLA). There is a strongly held...
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