[HT] The Hunger Project

Emerging India either does not know or ignores the statistics: Half its children are malnourished, a record worse than the world’s symbol for deprivation, sub-Saharan Africa. India is ranked 66th out of 88 countries in the Global Hunger Index drawn up by the International Food Policy Research Institute. India is home to a quarter of the world’s hungry – about 230 million people – according to a World Food Programme report released on March 2009. More than 455 million Indians survive on US$ 1.25 ((Rs 56) approximately) a day or less, compared with 420 million in 1981. As the government prepares to launch India’s grandest attempt yet to tackle hunger and malnutrition, the Hindustan Times announces a nationwide effort to track, investigate and report every aspect of the struggle to rid the nation of hunger.

Follow the Hunger Project on HT. 

Orissa, Jharkhand Cut Neonatal Mortality Rates

 Mothers in the tribal regions of Jharkand and Orissa are stopping their babies from dying by simply 'peer educating' and 'talking out' problems with the help of NGOs like Ekjut. TOI reports:

Prasanta Tripathy runs the NGO Ekjut, which facilitated the training. He says “there is a 45% reduction in neonatal mortality rate as well as a change in practices related to child-rearing. Besides, there is a 57% reduction in postnatal depression.”
Tripathy says they stress on “participation, learning and action — the ingredients in the making of an empowered mother and healthy baby.”
The NGO started with 20 women in three villages around Chakradharpur six years ago. By now, it has 20,000 trained women, spread across more than a thousand villages in nine districts of Jharkhand and Orissa.
Sumitra Gagrai, Ekjut group coordinator, says the core of the revolution was the community spirit unleashed, when trained female volunteers fanned out across remote villages “to encourage adolescent girls and married women to find practical solutions for good health during the pre and post pregnancy period.” 

Read the TOI reports here and here.
Just another example of how far even a handful of small basic steps can go in alleviating the seemingly intractable challenges facing us today.

D Subbarao : Why is Financial Literacy Important?

In a recently held RBI-OECD International Workshop on Financial Literacy in Bengaluru on March 22, 2010, Dr. D Subbarao, the RBI Governor, highlighted the imperative of Financial Inclusion and Financial Literacy for an economically empowered India :

5. Let me step back a bit and spend a few minutes on why financial literacy is so vital. There is virtually no country whose economy has developed and matured without a corresponding deepening of the financial sector. And such deepening is possible only when individuals and households are financially literate and are able to make informed choices about how they save, borrow and invest. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the sub prime problem would not have grown to the explosive proportions that it did if people had been financially more ‘literate’.
6. Beyond the individual level - and this is equally important - greater financial literacy can aid a better allocation of resources and thereby raise the longer-term growth potential of the economy. India clocked average growth of around nine percent in the period 2004-08 before the global financial crisis interrupted the growth trajectory. One of the key drivers of this growth has been the increased savings rate in the economy, which reached a high of 36 percent of GDP in 2007/08, the year before the crisis.
7. The increase in savings itself has been a consequence of the changing demographics and the welcome trend of rise in household savings. However, nearly half our population still lacks access to banking and other financial services. If we can redress that and provide this ‘left behind’ population access to the entire gamut of banking services, we could raise household and overall domestic savings even further, and that will fulfill one of the necessary conditions to achieve the double-digit growth that we aspire to.
8. To make that happen, we need to deepen the penetration and expand the coverage of financial services to all sections of society and to all regions of the country in a meaningful way, particularly to those at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Lack of financial awareness and literacy is one of the main reasons behind lack of access to financial products or failure to use them even when they are available. An NCAER and Max New York Life study shows that in India, around 60 percent of laborers surveyed indicated that they store cash at home, while borrowing from moneylenders at high interest rates - a pattern which increases their financial vulnerability.
9. Financial literacy and awareness are thus integral to ensuring financial inclusion. This is not just about imparting financial knowledge and information; it is also about changing behaviour. For the ultimate goal is to empower people to take actions that are in their own self-interest. When consumers know of the financial products available, when they are able to evaluate the merits and demerits of each product, are able to negotiate what they want, they will feel empowered in a very meaningful way. They will know enough to demand accountability and seek redressal of grievances.  This, in turn, will enhance the integrity and quality of financial markets. One big lesson we have learnt in our outreach programmes is that financial literacy is not just a public good; it is a merit good. What this means is that by deepening financial literacy, not just individuals and households, even the society at large stands to benefit.

Read the complete text of his speech here.

[Forbes India] How did Gujarat Become a Farming Paradise?

The turnaround of agriculture is water-starved areas of Gujarat has lessons worth emulating for all State planners. Some highlights from the article by RN Bhaskar in Forbes India:

Gujarat was early to amend the laws governing the marketing of agricultural produce and allow farmers to sell their output directly to private buyers. Even today, many states haven’t done so and keep the farmer tied to the official procurement hubs. Some have gone back on reforms. But Gujarat has persisted with opening up market access to farmers.
This also opened up contract farming. In 2004-05, Gujarat took an unusual step. It allowed companies to buy crops from farmers a year in advance. This helped the farmers hedge against price upheavals and guaranteed a minimum price. What’s more, there is also some flexibility to allow higher payments if prices rose at the time of transaction. While it reduced market risks for the farmer, it also encouraged companies to invest in farming indirectly. 

 ....

But the big change in Gujarat has come from the conservation of the most crucial resource for farming – water. Gujarat started by planning large dam projects such as Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP) to achieve a breakthrough in agriculture. To this day, its progress remains limited. ... That’s why Gujarat has embarked on a major exercise to conserve water and use it more efficiently in the fields. The most important turning point in the state’s agriculture has been the innovative management of its groundwater resources. The state has adopted a combination of rainwater harvesting – that traps water that would otherwise drain away – and micro irrigation – that supplies each drop of water more efficiently and directly to the plant. The movement has been a roaring success and stories abound of conversion of barren lands into fertile farms, rising yields and falling costs of cultivation across the state.

Read the full article here.

Vijay Mahajan on Universal Financial Inclusion : How It Can be Done

He writes in the Inclusion magazine:

In terms of bank branch density, India scores fairly well and this is primarily due to the branch expansion policy that was pursued soon after nationalisation in the 1970s. Thus, while we seem to have cracked the “last mile” problem, the poor have still to see the “first smile” from the service providers. More branches have not translated into better access for the poor. They still find it difficult to fulfill the “know your customer” (KYC) requirements to open accounts and contending with surly staff in branches. How can this be changed?
...
The interesting thing is that India’s banking system (except for big city-based high-end users) in 2009 is a lot like the Indian telephone system was in 1989, before the STD-PCO revolution. To be sure, there are thousands of ATMs from where even small account holders can draw cash, but even these are mainly present in bigger cities in any reasonable density. To truly take the system to the next level of access, three things are a must – enabling every adult to open a bank account, establishing a dense and nationwide network of transaction points, spanning not just the “last mile” but the “final furlong”, and lastly, an inter-bank exchange or switch, to ensure that all transactions are recorded in real-time. Taken together, this will be the Nationwide Electronic Financial Inclusion System (NEFIS) that we recommended in the report of the Raghuram Rajan Committee on Financial Sector Reforms.
...
Interestingly, India is on the threshold of these possibilities. The first, opening of bank accounts, can be greatly enabled by the proposed unique ID (UID) number that will be given to every Indian. This will eliminate the need for further KYC requirements. The second is supported by the recent recommendation of the RBI committee on the business correspondent (BC) model, which says that kirana shops and STD-PCOs (yes!!) can become BCs for banks. The third, an inter-bank switch already exists both for large transactions - RTGS for above Rs 100,000 and NEFT for transactions below Rs 100,000, but rarely below Rs 1,000. Thus, all key parts of NEFIS are falling into place.
 ...
The technologically challenged need not worry if this is possible and how much will it cost. It is already being done in several pilots, such as by the pioneer company in this field, A Little World or ALW, and the whole kit costs less than Rs 10,000 per mobile BC!
...
After satisfying itself that such technologies are reliable and tamper-proof, the RBI should permit the use of m-money more widely (that is beyond bank account to bank account transfers), as has been done in European e-money regulations. This will reduce the use of currency for small transactions, just as has happened for larger transactions in the last decade. This will significantly reduce transaction costs of cash pay-in, pay-out and handling currency notes/coins. A day should come when an NREGS worker receives her wages on her mobile phone and uses it to pay her kirana shop and school fees, without using currency. All this, while the balance in her account earns interest!

 Read the full article here.

WSJ on Rural BPO

"Do you really think women can work on computers?" Men in Bagar genuinely wanted to know the answer to that question when Source for Change – an initiative of the Mumbai-based Piramal Foundation -- set up an all-women BPO (business process outsourcing) center in this small village in India's Rajasthan state. The skepticism didn't end even after Source for Change selected 10 women from 25 applicants in August 2007. Wary men would accompany their wives or daughters to the training center and then wait around until they were ready to return home.
More than two years later, men still drop in unannounced at the remodeled house that serves as Source for Change's combined headquarters and training center. But these are not the same suspicious husbands and fathers. Instead, they are individuals hoping to find jobs for the women in their families. "They realized that we made available the two most valued symbols of social status here: English and computers," says Karthik Raman, head of business development for Source for Change. "Some of the women who work here earn more than the men in their families. They now have a voice at the table."

Read the full article here.