TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Health: The pharmaceutical industry in India fears that one in five drugs sold in the country are fake. A study undertaken by the by the drug controller general will focus on this.
Transportation: India and France on Wednesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation in railways, including constructing world class stations, [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Health: Over 53% children in India under five years - that is, 67 million - live without basic healthcare facilities. This means that India alone accounts for about one-third of all children in the world aged below five who don’t have basic healthcare. [Source: Times of India]
Education: There is a shortage [...]

Investing in Private Education, a solution?

Nitin Rao, a staff writer for Nextbillion.net, has published a paper in the MIT International Review, titled Harnessing India’s Human Capital Through Educational Opportunities, which puts forth the idea that education can be effectively delivered in India through “sustainable investments in a vast network of private schools delivering standardized, high quality education at an affordable [...]

Studying the Right to Information

Google.org is supporting a study focused on the Right to Information Act as part of their Inform and Empower Initiative. From their blog:
To help us better understand how to make the Right to Information (RTI) more effective in India, we are delighted that Shekhar Singh who is an active member of the people’s movement for [...]

Measuring the Social Performance of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs)

As part of its InSight Series, ACCION International has published a report entitled, “Guidelines to Evaluate Social Performance,” which aims to develop a structured framework for assessing and reporting the social performance of MFIs. According to the report:
Social goals drive the strategies of many microfinance institutions, yet many of these institutions are judged primarily [...]

ISTE Conference and Student Essay Competition on Rural Technology

From Let Me Know, here is a conference and essay competition on “Technology For Rural India: Challenges and Perspectives.” The conference will focus on the following:
In celebration of the ISTE Day 2008, the Delhi Section of the Indian Society of Technical Education (ISTE) is hosting a conference on “Technology for Rural India: Challenges and Perspectives”. [...]

Food: The New Luxury Good

TC-I frequently covers the headlines concerning the current food shortage crisis in India, and this issue has deep roots and sobering implications. Infochange interviewed M S Swaminathan, a plant geneticist and advocate of sustainable agriculture.  Swaminathan breaks down the global issue, its effect on India, future scenarios, and what needs to be [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Health: According to a report, India is not on track toward the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child and maternal mortality. The number of children who die before their fifth birthday stands at 76 per 1,000 live births, while the goal is 38.
Government Schemes: The Gujarat state government’s Jyoti Gram Yojana, a program to [...]

MFIs tend to lose focus as they ‘evolve’

A new report released by the Women’s World Banking (WWB) observes that as many microfinance institutions transform from non-profits to traditional financial intermediaries, they tend to shift away from their original focus on helping poor women and instead focus on making larger loans a la a traditional financial institution. The results were disheartening as the [...]

Using future markets for social entrepreneurship?

Giulio Quaggiotto at PSD Blog, a World Bank Group blog, highlighted a very intriguing trend that is emerging within governments and companies: the use of prediction markets to help predict customer trends or citizens’ desires. His post brought forth some articles and studies that have recently come out.

A McKinsey & Co. report on prediction markets [...]

Wrap it Up: Two Papers reviewed by Microcapital.org

Microcapital.org reviewed two recently released papers this week; here is a summary of those.
1. “Should Access to Credit Be a Right?” by Marek Hudon
This is a very interesting question as fields like microfinance have gained so much popularity and success. The paper takes both practical and normative approaches to this issue and frames the overall [...]

Amartya Sen encapsulates why we should care

One of the ongoing discussions that is linked ot the field of social entrepreneurship is the very nature of what this concept truly means. In a talk held at Stanford University this week, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen eloquently and concisely spoke to the issues of empowerment and enlightenment, and I feel as though his words [...]

TED | Talks | Yochai Benkler: Open-source economics (video)

Here is an interesting video on social networking and the advent of open-source economics. This is a trend that I believe will have significant positive effects on the social entrepreneurship scene.
from www.ted.com posted with vodpod

Headlines Digest

Gender Budgeting: In order to promote the concept of gender budgeting at all levels of governance, the Ministry of Women and Child Development is developing manuals on this topic. This is part of a larger movement to address gender specific barriers.
Education: Proctor & Gamble’s global philanthropy program, “Live, Learn, and Thrive” has partnered with Child [...]

Cellphones and Development

Recently, the NYTimes featured an article entitled, “Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?”, in which it highlighted a new wave of “human behaviour” research funded by cellphone companies such as Nokia in order to tap into less developed markets. The author of the article centers around a series of conversations/interactions with Jan Chipchase, [...]