Effective identification of the poor continues to be a problem Identification of the poor has always been more easily said than done. Many people consider the poverty line to be 1.25 USD per day, but can such an amount universally … Read More
Access is Not Enough
There has been a lot in the news lately about financial inclusion and extending banking services to the poor. With the expansion of the Aadhaar registration and new initiatives like the Financial Access at Birth (FAB), it seems that a … Read More
India Place Finder – A Cutting Edge GIS Tool
A cutting edge geographic information system tool to track the Indian diaspora has been developed by Dr. Tsukasa Mizushima, a professor at Tokyo University. Dr. Mizushima and his colleagues have developed the “India Place Finder“, a web-based application that allows … Read More
Great Expectations for the Financial Inclusion Agenda
Even in an environment of great expectations, new RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan’s opening statementwas remarkable for its ambition and clarity of purpose. His speech deserves the widespread praise it has received. It should also be lauded for its unexpected and … Read More
How do Indians Use their Gold Loans?
In our previous post we spoke about why Indians buy gold. Citing another important finding from our gold-loan study, we highlight the various purposes for acquiring gold loans in this post. According to the revised norms of Microfinance Institutions (Development … Read More
Internal Migration: Transmuting Rural India's Population
Today, internal migration seems to have a similar effect on the economies of both the states involved, the lifestyle of their people and more importantly, on the survival of their populations Migration is not about the distance a person travels or … Read More
The Difficulty of Second-Hand Information in Development
We present a guest-post from our intern, Brian Goggin. Brian is a senior at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service studying international economics and development. His research interests lie in the relationship between democratic institutions and government development expenditures, with a … Read More
Take-two of the BC Model
“The Business Correspondent model is a failure” – seems to be a popular statement to make in the development sector these days. The statement reflects the on-going criticism that the success of the BC model is hindered by various constraints … Read More
The Art of Process Evaluation
What is process evaluation? The purpose of Process Evaluation is to assess whether the implementation of the process in a project, is in accordance with the overall project objectives and project plan. PE analysis assesses the strength and structure of; … Read More
Islamic Banking and Barriers to Adoption in India
On the eve of Eid al-Fitr, or the end of the month of Ramadan, we refer to an article we featured in our February Policy Desk Note on Islamic Banking in India In Islam, interest is considered to directly contribute … Read More