Have you heard of Srabani Bera? I will not be surprised if your response were, “Srabani who!” So let’s hear Srabani’s story first. Like many other families like hers, Srabani’s husband had to migrate to distant Bengaluru to earn a

Not all persons are equal. Neither are our financial needs. Yet all of us need banking services – from the very basic to the more complicated commercial needs. For a migrant labour living outside there is a need to send

The huge rural spread of Indian market has always remained a dream research area for corporates as well as academic researchers. Ever since Professor Prahlad theorised on base of the pyramid – that largely refers to the rural segment of

The issue with any buzz is its tendency to get far too generalised with time. Once generalisation takes place, an illusion turns into reality. The issue with pollution and environmental concerns are precisely these. People now are coming round to

The gap between skill and delivery requirement is probably one of the more pressing issues that keeps dodging the corporates. The issue arises from the inability of a company to deploy an HR dynamics that efficiently dovetails the needed skill

While the country keeps worrying about the banking sector in India, the micro-finance industry and its perils, pitfalls or achievements tend to be brushed under the carpet. But if we take into account the delivery that the industry is executing,

The kick for those in microfinance operations lies in watching the customers ride the cycles of prosperity. As you all know, the movement is focused on empowering women as the agents of development. Why the women? At the cost of

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel for the year 2019 to Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee, Esther Dufflo and Michael Kremmer. With this award, the issue of poverty has

People value what they pay for. On the other hand, in most cases, access to services or commodities that come free are generally not viewed as having the same quality as similar services or commodities that are paid for. Take

There are many things that go unsung about women. Take for example, their habits of setting aside resources to tide over bad times. Across nations and cultures women traditionally maintain a store. That store has always been used to set

Add ‘em’ before power and you have a goal that would change the face of the earth. The question “how”, however, is the challenge. There was a time when it was thought that by taking from the rich and giving

If climate were to be a line, weather would be a dot in it. To most of us, climate change is all about global warming and its impact. The understanding is not wrong but is not comprehensive. Because, in real

This is a question that has bugged discussions on economic movements for ages and there is no clear answer to it. Because competitions does kill jobs and it does create jobs. Sounds contradictory? It does but it’s true nonetheless. Think

This is a completely new concept that’s now coming down into use in the everyday analysis of the financial strategy to upscale the poor into sustainable prosperity cycle. A recent World Bank blog (April, 2019) clearly lays down the agenda

Financial inclusion is defined by awareness about and access to financial resources. Any situation that provides focus on the creation of awareness presupposes lack of it. And, globally, it is seen that where functional literacy is very low, there is

Millions of people in the world go to bed hungry. Yet, the amount of food that we waste could have fed all of us and would still have leftovers for the next day. It’s also said the amount of tax

The fact that there is a need to define boundaries of business is not a contested issue. In any civilized society, rules are needed so that no stake-holder can harm the interest of another to further its interest. A state,

When Chennai needed rescue trains laden with water during its recent water crisis we sat up and took notice. But public memory is short and we tend to quickly turn such crisis to a topic of mere reference in ‘chai

The statement that AI is a threat is attributed to Jack Ma – the Chinese IT billionaire who is arguably the richest person walking the earth. His statement is interpreted to have implied that it would take away a lot

In my last blog, I expressed my concern about the global environmental crisis. Deforestation is, unfortunately, an androgenic cause of the impending disaster that is staring at our face. In the beginning, it must be admitted that the actual quantification

A few weeks ago the Australian Koala Foundation declared the Koala bear as functionally extinct. With just about 80,000 left, there is not enough adult left to propagate the species. The news got wide coverage in media, but unfortunately, little

While grappling with the challenge of alleviating poverty, development economists have gone through the whole spectrum of conceivable instruments that could be feasibly thought of without triggering a disruption. By the seventies, however, the strain of financing poverty alleviation started

With financial inclusion and cashless transactions as goals set by the government, technological development is the crucial answer to the challenge posed by last mile access in India. In the creation of a comprehensive financial inclusion therefore use of technology,

Globally, MSMEs are now getting increasingly accepted as the main driver of growth given their nimbleness and the ability to create employment. In fact, in the USA, two third of the jobs are accounted for by this segment alone. The

India is at a juncture wherein it stands to be challenged by the nature to protect it. We all know that the intense debate about development notwithstanding, India is already in the big league in terms of national prosperity and

Diwali sales over the last few years have turned out to be huge hits on e-commerce platforms. Starting from refrigerators to clothes everything gets sold at a difficult to get bargain prices, so much so that we are getting to