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G20 Faces Obstacles in its Efforts to Spread Good Farming Practices
Spreading good ideas and practices in farming sounds like a simple enough goal, but can be immensely complicated not just on a global level but also locally. Ahead of the G20 meeting in Montpellier, France, on agricultural research and development , which begins on Monday, Mark Holderness gives a telling example from his time working in Bangladesh. He urged female farmers to plant cleaner rice ...
- Region
- South Asia
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India?s ’Biggest Entrepreneurial Event’ Set to Take Off Sept 30
New Delhi: The power of entrepreneurship and innovation to transform India into one of the leading economies of the world will be visible in full measure at the TiEcon Delhi 2011. The entrepreneurial event, among the biggest in Asia, begins on September 30 at Taj Palace Hotel, New Delhi. The annual flagship event of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Delhi-NCR chapter, will see over 1500 attendees listen to the first CK Prahalad Memorial Lecture, set up in memory of the renowned Michigan Uni...
- Region
- South Asia
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Report Stresses Need to Identify the ’Poor’ in India
In India the poor are visible everywhere in villages, hamlets, in forestland or degraded lands, along coastal regions, in the mountains, in urban centres and in industrial areas. For all the visible signs of poverty, there is a huge chunk of these which are invisible. It comes back to the question of what makes the poor, poor. This is the question that should plague those who are at the forefront of polic...
- Region
- South Asia
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Microcredit and Lamia Karim’s ’Women in Debt in Bangladesh’
Taj Hashmi in the first part of his two-part review A report by the Government of Bengal in the 1930s revealed that a poor peasant from Mymensingh district in eastern Bengal (Bangladesh since 1971) had told a land revenue official in 1929: "My father, Sir, was born in debt, grew in debt and died in debt. I have inherited my father’s debt and my son will inherit mine." Following the introduction of microcredit, glorified as microfinance by its local and international promoters, ...
- Region
- South Asia
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Health Tests at Your Doorstep
KOCHI: At daybreak, around 40 women in the city set out on their rounds to do medical tests. They conduct routine tests for over 750 persons that are quite cost-effective. These women are part of the Saantwanam project, a poverty-alleviation as well as health-oriented programme organised jointly by the Health Action by People (Thiruvananthapuram), Kudumbashree, and State Bank of India. The women visit houses and take instant readings of blood glucose(...
- Region
- South Asia
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IIT Fest to Focus on Environment, Rural Aid, Empowering Rural Folk
CHENNAI: This year, Shaastra, the annual technical festival of the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, will be all about saving the environment and empowering people in rural areas to do the same. It will be held from September 28 to October 2. The Shaastra Social Innovation Challenge, a new event, is expected to have a direct impact on rural India. The problem statement includes designing a solar cooker to replace traditional wood-based cooking and designing a fully autonomous rob...
- Region
- South Asia
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Esther Duflo Bribes India’s Poor to Health
Rajasthan is India’s desert state, an often inhospitable place where per capita income averages around $1.77 per day. Poverty like that--understanding it and imagining ways to fix it--is what Esther Duflo lives for. Since 2003, her Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (named for a wealthy Saudi donor), or J-PAL, has conducted 240 randomized, controlled trials of specific ways to help the poor. She tests poverty solutions the way medical researchers test new drugs, which can violate the p...
- Categories
- Energy
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- solar
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Half of Microcredit Goes to Well-off People: Study
Although the microfinance concept was developed to assist marginal people to address poverty, around 50 percent of micro credit goes to the well-off, reports UNB. "A lot of microcredit is wasted on the well-off; there is yet another problem that many of the poorer households do not benefit from it," said Prof SR Osmani, teacher of Development Economics at the University of Ulster, UK and a visiting fellow of Institute of Microfinance in Dhaka. Referring to the findings o...
- Region
- South Asia
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