Monthly Archives: August 2008

Tapan Parikh – Technology Review’s Humanitarian of the Year 2007

Posted on August 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

I had the pleasure of meeting Tapan Parikh a few weeks ago when he presented on a panel at a conference to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of my alma mater, IIT Bombay. The panel focused on the latest trends in technology with the rest of the panelists discussing emerging areas in nanotechnology, biomedicine and energy. Tapan provided a refreshingly different viewpoint that emphasized the needs of the end user in developing countries. By harnessing technology to make things simpler, Tapan has provided platforms that make the daily grind of field workers in rural parts of the world a lot easier. Continue reading →

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Posted in BOP, Information Technology, international development, micro-finance, mobile technology, Poverty, Social Ecosystem, Social Entrepreneur, social Innovation, sustainable development

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BusinessWeek – One Laptop per Child Lands in India

Posted on August 6, 2008 | 5 comments

A  BusinessWeek article mentions that the MIT-spawned OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project has finally penetrated India with a tie up with the mega-corporation Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG). This is after several failed attempts by Nicholas Negroponte, godfather of OLPC, to establish a beachhead in India. Previous negative comments from the Indian political establishment about his efforts include:

In 2001 Information Technology Minister Arun Shourie dismissed his [Negroponte’s Media Lab] efforts as “pedagogically suspect” and wanted more accountability.

… in 2006, his project was again rebuffed by India’s then-Education Secretary, Sudeep Banerjee

“Our primary school children need reading and writing habits, not expensive laptops,” says Arun Kumar Rath, India’s Education Secretary.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Education, Information Technology, Politics, Rural Education, Schools, Social Ecosystem

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Gates Foundation gets into Microsavings

Posted on August 1, 2008 | Leave a comment

The Gates Foundation has made some major investments in the area of finance over the past few years. Now, based on their findings and experiments, they are making a big push into the area of micro-savings. Traditionally rural finance has focused on providing micro-credit services to the poor. Only recently have some of the micro-finance organizations started extending their services to include savings and insurance. In most cases the issue has been local regulations and banking controls.

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal – Giving a Lot for Saving a Little – the author points out several issues why savings schemes for the rural poor have not taken off. Among the issues identified:

  • Strict regulations on entities that hold deposits
  • Lack of remote branches that allow easy access to money
  • Too costly for traditional banks to provide services for the size of accounts Continue reading →

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Posted in BOP, Information Technology, international development, micro-finance, Poverty, Rural Development, Social Ecosystem, social Innovation

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