Considering IRMA?

Its the season of MBA entrance exams in India once again. Hundreds of thousands of students vying for few thousand MBA seats in the belief that its going to secure their future. I graduated from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) in 2005. I loved my two years there and in this post, I am rehashing an older note I had written for IRMA aspirants. 


While IRMA was established in 1979 to supply trained managers to rural cooperatives and (later) NGOs in India in the 1980s, its graduates now work for a diverse universe of organisations. When I joined IRMA, it was only with the expectation that it would expose me to a sector that I would find interesting and meaningful to explore. I did not anticipate the daunting challenges the development sector throws up, nor did I assume that I would walk out of the campus and change the world. My naive reasoning was that selling soaps and shampoo was not something that could get me excited and keep me awake at night and I wanted to spend two years engaging with issues that were more interesting and most importantly, with people that shared this passion. 


However, soon enough, I learnt that depending on who was producing them, where they were being sold and who were sharing the proceeds, there is nothing less-meaningful about selling soaps or shampoo or cars, loans and insurance. So it doesnt matter whether we advertise IRMA as an institute that imparts education in rural management, rural development, social work or just management - if IRMA gives us a little of all of this or in varying degrees, we ought to be able to use the components as and when required - just like one uses multiple linguisitic and regional identities and affiliations with different institutions in our lives as and when applicable.


It goes without saying that every IRMAn is entitled to follow his or her chosen path, not only during the PRM, but also, obviously, after graduation. For sure, IRMAns are in anything and everything to do with rural areas and probably, not just there, but also in areas which have little direct links with rural areas. The IIMs dont say that none of their graduates can be NGO-wallahs, nor do the IITs. Today though, rural is big. Every marketer wants a piece of the pie. The possibilities are endless - in whichever sector one chooses.


Is IRMA then right to restrict placements? I think that as an institution, IRMA has the right to have a vision for itself and a direction it wanted to guide its programme participants towards. In the end, though, what IRMA does is to expect young aspirants to make a choice. Whenever anyone asks me about applying to IRMA or when they are considering their offer, I try to warn them that if they are not sure, they may get disillusioned. I am aware it may make it tough for the decision-maker, but I think it is important that people think through their choices at that stage (with whatever is the available information and whatever is the levels of conviction they can muster).  


This of course does not mean IRMA graduates and/or development workers should be placed on a pedestal. As I have said before, there is nothing intrinsically holier or self-sacrificing about working in the development sector. IRMA is not the only way in. And today, that's not the only road out of IRMA either.

"You Indians are not serious-o"

In a random taxi this morning, the driver asks me: "Are you Indian or Pakistani?"
Me: "Oh, I am Indian..."


After a few moments...


He: "Your people...they cannot organise the Commonwealth Games"
I paused for a bit before asking him why. The games were already a mess...I was dreading what he was going to say/ask next. 


He went on: "Aye...you Indians are not serious-o. You are using monkeys for security" (looking genuinely concerned). He had heard about them in the radio. He was right. India had indeed deployed its vanar-sena for the games

Langurs are an aggressive type of monkey with long tails and dark faces. They are controlled on leads by specially trained handlers, who release them once other monkeys are seen.

Four langurs each will patrol the two stadiums, he said. Two more would be on standby, he added.

I tried to rationalise with him that if dogs could be used for security, why not monkeys? And anyway to me, dogs were scarier than monkeys. 


He disagreed vehemently: "These monkeys you see, they are very dangerous-o. Some of them, like baboons, they can kill you!"


This would definitely not have made him feel much better

Thousands of monkeys roam Delhi, mostly around government offices and are considered a public nuisance.

For years the animals have caused havoc, riding on the city's metro trains and even roaming through parliament. They have invaded the prime minister's office and the defence ministry. They cannot be killed because many Indians see them as sacred

Bravo, Guardian!

Guardian takes on the Gates Foundation, asking a few direct questions - 

The foundation has never been upfront about its vision for agriculture in the world's poorest countries, nor the role of controversial technologies like GM. But perhaps it could start the debate here?

In the meantime, it could tell us how many of its senior agricultural staff used to work for Monsanto or Cargill

This is John Vidal writing in Guardian's new development blog - 



Taking on the state is the rightful duty of the press; taking on corporations happens less often (especially when not tipped off by a rival); but taking on a sponsor is almost unheard of...especially in this age of paid news


Of course there will be responses from the foundation; explanations by sector experts; debates among scientists, environmentalists; economists and other activists...But for now, bravo!

Turning Governance Upside Down

An Upside Down View of Governance was published a few months back by the Centre for The Future State at IDS. I recently discovered a 15-page summary of the same. The research findings reflected in Upside-down are optimistic in sum 

progressive change can happen when people start to see that they have common interests in cooperating to create collective goods. There can be productive bargaining between public and private actors that results in positive sum outcomes (improved security, peaceful resolution of conflicts, more productive private investment, better public financial management, more inclusive public services). Moreover the processes of bargaining between state and society can themselves strengthen opportunities and incentives for collective action (including action by or on behalf of poor people) as well as the capacity of the state to respond.

Upside Down relies primarily on examples of (mostly) home-grown success stories from around the developing world - building a narrative around how one should view governance in these countries - in many ways, similar to Judith Tendler's 'Good Government in the Tropics' that focused on good government practices that made key sectors work in Ceara, Brazil. 


One of the central thrusts is on recognising the importance of informal institutions (see Chris Blattman blogging about it here) in strengthening governance in local countries. This is not to say that informal institutions intrinsically good; the point is that we should

set aside prejudice and undertake more detailed, objective research into how particular arrangements actually function at a very local level.

Also, Upside Down cautions us against being swayed by the concept of influential 'champions'/charismatic leaders and instead, focus on the political context in which individual leaders operate - a point worth repeating when we come up against programs that are labelled as individual-led. 


While focusing on home-grown solutions, Upside-down is not suggesting that donors just stand by and let weaker states be. Targeting donors, the last chapter lays out implications for donors and concludes with 

Many of these ideas are beginning to inform donor approaches, particularly in fragile states. But adopting them as mainstream practice would imply a big shift in how donors see their role: from being experts with responsibility for “delivering” on the millennium development goals, to being much more effective facilitators of locally driven change.

Identity questions in the National Census

Census 2010 in India has been controversial, with a vigorous debate over the inclusion of questions that determine the caste of an individual.

I have just one question - in principle, how are questions about caste identity any better or worse than questions about racial identity?

Picture on the left, from the census forms of the US (Q 9).

Also refer to the UK (page 8) form.

I don't yet have a position on this issue. Counting caste/race is surely not the same as endorsing it; and in fact, the information could be used to the benefit of all. But would it also encourage partisan politics even further?

Magnets can turn our brain

A powerful magnetic field can temporarily confuse the brain and alter our hand preference, a new study has found. 

Dr Flavio Oliveira, who led the study, said: “We are not really looking at handedness, but at hand choice. We found that in situations where people are almost equally likely to use their left or right hand we can make them use their left hand more by stimulating this part of the brain.”

“Before you reach out to press an elevator button or grab a coffee cup your brain is making a decision about which hand to use. We are handicapping one of the hands so that the other one wins,” Dr Oliveira was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail.

Earlier this year, a similar study showed that magnetic therapy can alter people’s moral judgements - and make them behave more thoughtlessly.

From The Hindu

Measuring improved sanitation?

Context matters!

...definitions of 'improved' are contested and controversial and do not take into account cultural and local perceptions of what works or not. Many toilets built in the course of Community Led Total Sanitationinterventions would not count as 'improved' because they may just be pits in the ground, and not with slabs or pour flushes. Similarly shared toilets/ latrines do not count as ‘improved' (although governments like Ghana decided to consider the installation of shared sanitation as an improvement). Measurement of MDG progress is by averages which say little about regional variations and variations between socio-economic group or by gender

And some advice for donors

...donors also need to think outside of the MDG box in a more joint up way and break down conventional sectoral barriers. Water and sanitation need to be mainstreamed in wider development, public health and poverty reduction efforts. A village woman in Kenya does not separate out health, water, sanitation and livelihoods concerns. She also knows that school sanitation and an accessible water source will help keep her teenage daughter in school. But policy makers still cling onto their sectors and remits, ignoring the multidimensional aspects of the MDGs and how joint up they need to be on-the-ground 

From IDS 

Guess who wrote the following?

Speaking of transparency, let’s have a little more, please, when it comes to the question of who is doing what toward which goal and to what effect. We have to know where we are to know how far we’ve left to go.

Right now it’s near impossible to keep track. Walk (if you dare) into M.D.G. World and you will encounter a dizzying array of vague financing and policy commitments on critical issues, from maternal mortality to agricultural development. You come across a load of bureau-babble that too often is used to hide double counting, or mask double standards. This is the stuff that feeds the cynics.

What we need is an independent unit — made up of people from governments, the private sector and civil society — to track pledges and progress, not just on aid but also on trade, governance, investment. It’s essential for the credibility of the United Nations, the M.D.G.’s, and all who work toward them.

And that was the deal, wasn’t it? The promise we made at the start of this century was not to perpetuate the old relationships between donors and recipients, but to create new ones, with true partners accountable to each other and above all to the citizens these systems are supposed to work for. Strikes me as the right sort of arrangement for an age of austerity as well as interdependence. (The age of interrupted affluence should sharpen our focus on future markets for our sake as well as theirs.)

The answer is here 

Notes on cook-stoves

Smoke-less cook-stoves are back in fashion. It is strange how an 'old as the hills' idea suddenly generates a buzz when announced by a powerful woman, backed by millions of $$$ at a summit in a swanky hotel ballroom. In any case, the really important question for development workers who swim the tide and keep up with the trends is - how can we make them work (for us?) this time? 

This post is not about best practices. It is from my memory of a cook-stoves programme I have seen from close quarters; about what can go wrong. Although the intervention had features that could have made it work, it faced numerous challenges that made field workers and communities weary and progress, slow. The stoves were built using locally-available mud, using metal casts. A few individuals in every community were taught to build and maintain the stoves. This was also presented as an opportunity for self-help groups of women to adopt as an income-generating activity. Local potters were engaged to built a set of detachable pipes for the stove so that it would be easy to clean. Households paid for their own stoves. 

However, the implementation turned out to be quite tricky

• Smokeless cook-stoves required uniformly sized small pieces of firewood - which was a nuisance for women used to collecting firewood from the forest and using it directly in their stoves. Often, I have seen a whole tree trunk shoved into the fire, being used to cook.
• In the particular design that was being used, although a double-pot design, only one pot got the full heat, while the other pot only got the transfered heat from the first one. This usually meant they would have another stove burning since the new improved stove would  not cook fast enough.
• The new stoves also came in fixed sizes and one could only use pots of a certain size, unlike traditional stoves which could easily be adjusted to accommodate larger or smaller pots by merely moving bricks around. 
• In dense neighbourhoods, houses were much too close to each other and directing pipes through the nearest wall could mean smoking out the neighbour's bed room. This was after we somehow convinced families that we were not going to break their house down in trying to make a hole in the wall. 
• Communities also saw these chimneys/smoke pipes as a serious fire hazard, and rightfully so, since most houses had thatched roofs. 
• Mud pipes often broke during transportation; field workers and households wanted to use asbestos pipes - another health hazard. 
• In multi-caste villages, higher caste families would not allow individuals of lower castes to enter their kitchens. This was in spite of years of living together in the same community, attending social events collectively - the kitchen was still out of bounds
• Often these were one or two room houses, with no particular kitchen space. Such houses would often have no covered space outdoors where a new smokeless cook-stove could be installed. Where there was a kitchen, it was often small and would have no space to build a smokeless cook-stove. Of course, most families wouldn't allow their old stove to be dismantled.
• When the chimney started getting blocked, the stove would emit fumes, often worse than before. Households who were not taught to clean and maintain the cook-stoves or if pipes broke while cleaning - would then stop using them and move back to their traditional chullas. Having paid for stoves was not enough to ensure 'ownership'.

This is of course entirely anecdotal and need not be typical of other clean cook-stove programmes around the world, in the past, present or future. 

The English English is changing 'right now': Yay!

Some light-hearted (I hope) frustration here 

1. Right now the most irritating expression doing the rounds is … right now. It's everywhere – TV, radio and in the public prints – giving apparent urgency to what are usually vague general statements about tendencies in contemporary society. 
2. Or take the expression "Can I get an espresso and a bagel". This use of the word "get" crossed the Atlantic and replaced the perfectly acceptable and polite: "I wonder if I might have a buttered scone and a pot of Earl Grey"
3. You know the one: "We will be able to leverage synergies from this, going forward." It is a wholly redundant way of saying "in the future" – redundant because it is always in a sentence implying or formed in the future tense. Yet the people who say it just can't help saying it. It is their badge of acceptance within a particular narrow community. It shows they are corporate, entrepreneurial, in with the particular in-crowd that's particularly in right now (oops) – the business/marketing community.

I plead guilty on all three counts 

Sitting allowances

From my limited experience with trainings and meetings in Ghana, I am aware how important "Sitting Allowances" are for the success of an event. No surprises then in this - 

More than GH¢500,000 was said to have been spent by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) on sitting allowances, transportation and refreshment at general assembly and committee meetings for last year. The amount is more than what the assembly realised as revenue from its market tolls for the year, which amounted to GH¢436,809

 ....

There are 90 assembly members at the AMA, 60 elected and 30 government appointees. Each one receives GH¢70 at each subcommittee and ad hoc committee meeting while at the general assembly meetings, they receive GH¢80, GH¢55.00 as sitting allowance and GH¢25 as transportation. Currently, the assembly has 13 subcommittees.

Ghana should probably consider revising civil servants' salaries. But will that help with this culture of sitting allowances?

Ghana and its oil

Kosmos Energy, one of the operators in Ghana’s Oil fields, after being slapped with a 400-billion-cedi fine for negligently spilling a total of 706 barrels of toxic substances into the country’s marine waters, has in a three-page audacious letter virtually told the government of Ghana, to ‘go to hell and roast’, because it is untouchable.

Kosmos stated in the letter addressed to the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Mrs. Betty Mould Iddrisu, that the 400-Billion-cedi fine imposed on the company by government is “totally, unlawful, unconstitutional, ultra vires and without basis”. The letter was copied to the President, John Evans Atta Mills and the Minister for Environment, Science and Technology, Sherry Ayittey. 

Virtually, Kosmos admits that it has negligently spilled toxic substances into Ghana’s marine waters but believes that the company should be allowed to go scot-free because the government has no such legal authority to impose a 400-billion-cedi fine on it.

More here 

The number games in aid

Of the $50 billion promised, Oxfam calculates only $30 will be delivered. The missing $20 billion is just 0.0006% of G8 GNI, yet is enough to put every child in school or stop millions of children dying of malaria.

Irungu Houghton, calling upon donors to meet their aid commitments. 


Okay - so this has been said before in a million different ways; but it merits repetition. More money does not automatically imply better outcomes. At some level, these simplistic statements must hurt, rather than help the cause of development.

Use aid to strengthen accountability in India

Beyond the rhetoric, a vast majority of Indians remain poor; but India itself seems to be chugging along reasonably comfortably, promoting itself as an "emerging superpower". True, The government is not crunched for funds and its outlays dwarf all aid budgets. The state has high tax revenues and runs welfare schemes that reach out to remote corners of the country. 


On the economic ladder, the top 300 million in India form one of the most formidable markets ever and every marketer wants a share in the pie. This section of the population has 'privatised' their lives, or at the very least, have turned into a dependable market for private schools and hospitals, cars and motor-bikes, generators and inverters, water tankers and private bore-wells, supermarkets, real estate agents etc.


Civil society in India is vibrant and influential. The intense efforts of dedicated development sector workers and organisations have led to significant legislations and policy initiatives in the country. Grassroots innovations have been publicised and replicated. The mass media is now used to mobilise public sentiments and crowd-source opinions on a host of different issues.


On the surface, it looks like the state has the resources and the reach to implement; the market has the incentive to expand access and and civil society has the expertise and credibility to act as a watchdog. Of course, there are leakages and resources are often wasted; corruption is rampant and social problems abound. What is lacking is not capacity, but better lines of accountability between different actors in society. External aid is unlikely to  revamp the Indian bureaucracy, nor can it afford to continue plugging gaps in service delivery in perpetuity. Instead, aid could focus on improving systems of accountability. 


Here is my list for where aid could help:

• Strengthen capacities and enhance independence of state institutions such as the Comptroller and Auditor General and Central Vigilance Commission to hold the different state agencies to account. 
• Encourage improved performance management through outcome measurement of governmental and non-governmental programmes; ensure outcome budgets are prepared and disseminated widely; promote social audits at the local level
• Support rigorous research to identify and replicate best practices; foster an environment where research feeds policy through dissemination to legislators as well as key policymakers in government, NGOs as well as captains of industry  
• Strengthen national and global coalitions to regulate corporate interests that harm the poor and the environment
• Improve accountability of civil society organisations to citizens and not only to donors; promote a diverse set of local associational organisations where citizens come together 
• Promote a culture of local philanthropy and sustainable social initiatives by big businesses in the country. 

Not all of this will require direct funds disbursements. What this will involve however, is a willingness to embed in the local context and be part of the local politics. At a macro-level, this also requires reinforcing (or enhancing) the mandate and legitimacy of multi-lateral agencies such as the UN or World Bank to hold national governments to account. For donors, it might be cheaper, but possibly tougher. 

9/11 messages of peace and tolerance

9/11 is...the date on which Swami Vivekananda delivered his famous “Sisters and Brothers of America” speech at the World Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893.

It was on that day that Gandhi first spoke about Satyagraha — at a public meeting in Johannesburg

From The Hindu. Here is an older article with the same theme.

Got advice for the World Bank?

The World Bank is crowd-sourcing. Interested?

World leaders will be gathering next month to discuss the replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA) fund, the World Bank's fund for the poorest countries that helps fight poverty in Africa. We want you to join this conversation by submitting your video today! In a 2-minute video, answer the following question: If you were asked to advise the Bank on what to fund in your village, your town, your province, your state or your country to reduce poverty, what would you recommend and why?

Videos must be submitted by Wednesday, September 29th (11:59pm EST).

For all inquiries, email afrex@worldbank.org

Mobile money in India

Bharti Airtel has been granted a licence to start operating mobile money services in India. Airtel is the largest telecom company in India, with close to a 150 mn subscribers.

Although the initial cap on transactions of INR 5000 (about $120) seems quite low, it still is a great start into a market where the regulators have been quite slow and wary of consumer protection issues.

Why is development so tricky?

Saundra Schimmelpfennig explains why... There are no easy answers and often, the most obvious reactions to the perceived problems around us might turn out to be grave errors of judgment. To demonstrate, she picks on the oft-repeated analogy of rushing in to save a drowning child, even at the cost of minor personal loss or inconvenience and poses a series of what-if questions -   

• 
  

  What if the child isn’t actually drowning but instead is just being a drama queen like my nephew and what looked to you like drowning is actually just horsing around. Do you think the child would appreciate being suddenly grabbed by a stranger.

• What if you aren’t a strong enough swimmer and drown while attempting the rescue. To complicate things even further, what if the next person that happens along jumps in to try to save you and drowns as well. There were several recent instances of multiple drownings just like this near where I live.

• What if the child was actually trying to escape a sex trafficker who hid when you came into view. Without understanding this you might accidentally hand the child over to a life of bondage.

• What if the child’s family was hiding on the opposite bank because they were fleeing the country. They might have been able to save their child themselves but couldn’t because they were forced to stay hidden during your rescue efforts for fear of being caught.

• What if while in the middle of the river you look down stream and realize that it’s not just this one child that’s drowning but there are hundreds of helpless children struggling in the river. Do you stay and try to save them all or do you leave to get more help knowing that many of them may drown while you’re away?

Global governance

(Sent from Jessica's BlackBerry® smartphone on Tigo Ghana Network; spotted on a street in Accra)


or just colonial hangover? 


Real Democracy is Global; Global Justice for All: pretty deep, that. 
But: Give your vote; Use a UK vote - huh!??


Agreed that with GBP 99.5 million (2009) in aid and GBP 270 mn (2007) in trade, this bilateral cooperation is critical for Ghana. Meanwhile, I found this article from 5th May 2010 that ponders the implications of the UK 2010 elections on Ghana. (Excerpts below)

Through its Department for International Development (DFID) agency, Britain has supported Ghana’s budget. The good thing about this assistance is that there are no conditions, unlike the case with Ghana’s other development partners.

In February 2005, British government paid US79.9 million dollars of Ghana’s multilateral debt between 2005 and 2015.

Britain, undoubtedly, has been the champion for open markets inside and outside the European Union. It has promoted trade and investment in Ghana. For instance, in the year 2007, the UK as Ghana’s leading donor invested £250m in the country.

In fact, if any of the candidates should win and have a different view on Ghana other than what previous UK prime ministers have had with this country; it stands to reason that it will cause Ghana dearly

Who do you think they were rooting for?

Hate speeches and Freedom

Is it just me, or is the reaction to the Terry Jones hate speech episode quite grossly misplaced? 

“I just hope he understands that what he’s proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans,” Mr. Obama said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He added that it could “greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan.”

...Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was among the first to declare that the burning of Korans would put Americans soldiers and civilians in danger.

Well, the first casualty in this case happens to be an Afghan...no surprises there!


When this sort of inflammatory speeches happen, is it a violation of the freedom of speech if a law on religious hatred were to kick in? Many countries have laws that deal with words or actions that incite hatred on the basis of religion or ethnic identity. The US doesn't. The UK Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006, for example, says - 

1)

A person who uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred.

(2)

An offence under this section may be committed in a public or a private place, except that no offence is committed where the words or behaviour are used, or the written material is displayed, by a person inside a dwelling and are not heard or seen except by other persons in that or another dwelling.

(3)

A constable may arrest without warrant anyone he reasonably suspects is committing an offence under this section

One assumes this means some swift and strict action to control such hateful incidents. A swift response from the US state could have nipped this episode in the bud, as well as signalled the US' sincerity in promoting secularism as a core value globally...


In other possibly related news: Recently, an Indian filmmaker was apprehended in Houston, merely for possessing "jihadi literature"; falsely charged and detained for about twenty days and treated to a diet of bread and water for the duration of his stay. 

Encouraging Savings (Take Two)

So my friendly neighbourhood fruit-seller never started a savings scheme with me. No issues there, since it turns out that she has been saving with a susu-agent. Same deal - 1 GHC a day, saving up towards a certain targeted goal. The susu agent issues a little card to keep record and charges 1 GHC a month, irrespective of the amount saved during the month. Nothing surprising there - paying a charge on savings is a well-documented subject in the microfinance world and can be found in most parts of the world. Not surprising therefore that when I asked about why she paid a charge, she promptly replied that the susu agent not only kept the money safe, but also came to her everyday to remind her to save.

Recently though, she had been going slow on her savings, often not managing enough savings per month. As a result, she had not been saving at all for the last couple of months and I assume that's because she must have figured out that it isn't worth paying a fixed charge if she saved only a few days of the month.

About a month back, I had loaned her 50 GHC. I was slightly unsure if we had established that it was a loan and not a gift. Today, she said she had been saving up with her susu agent to pay me back part of the loan next week. She had apparently asked him to inform her when she touched a certain amount, so she could take out 20 GHC for me. Essentially, my interest-free loan to her wasn't interest-free anymore, since she had to pay to save in order to repay me. But she also seemed happy to have started saving once again...

For a brief moment, I contemplated if I should offer and attempt once again to explain to her the option of switching from the susu agent and saving with me, without any fee on her savings. But then it seemed like a bad idea and one that might disturb a thriving and sustainable arrangement on the ground, at least in the absence of a formal bank linkage...

Being invited

I might have uncovered one of the possible roots of the 'You are Invited" phenomenon here in Ghana. This is a standard phrase one hears whenever one comes across a Ghanaian who is either eating or about to start a meal. We all also know that the standard operating procedure on being invited is to say 'Thank You' and move on. I couldn't quite figure out if this was just people being polite or if there was more to it...

Then today, I heard this story of how adults in families in rural areas would always leave some food behind in their plate during their meals. In practice, the leftover food would come in handy for breakfast the next morning. But traditionally, the reason they would leave some food behind was so that they could have something to offer to any unexpected visitor. Upon my prodding them further, they mentioned that this visitor could be anyone - a friend or relative, someone stranded on the road or even the spirit of an ancestor that came to visit their previous residence. They always had to be prepared.

The idea being that if anyone turned up around the time you were eating or just after, you should be able to offer them food; and, if you didn't have enough to eat, you would rather offer the food to your guest than eat it yourself. Therefore, You are Invited!

Nutrition as a Public Good

Three reasons why Nutrition could be regarded a Public Good

First, there ae major extenalities generated from malnutrition (for the next generation--undernourished mothers give birth to undernourished babies).

Second there are major information asymmetries that consumers have to deal with (often parents they don't know their children are undernourished or the claims of food manufacturers are not counterbalanced by public information making informed choice difficult).

Third, there is a capital market failure in that parents cannot borrow for their infant's nutrition in the promise of repayment when they earn higher wages in the marketplace 20 years later

Lawrence Haddad, on Nutrition, in the comments section of a post lamenting the absence of private sector involvement in the fight against malnutrition in India. In a country that has seen commercial ventures with tremendous spread in rural areas such as Parle and AMUL, it is sad if there isn't more collaboration in this area...

Dirty dancing

"We found that (women paid more attention to) the core body region: the torso, the neck, the head. It was not just the speed of the movements, it was also the variability of the movement. So someone who is twisting, bending, moving, nodding."

Movements that went down terribly were twitchy and repetitive - so called "Dad dancing".

Dr Neave's aim was to establish whether young men exhibited the same courtship movement rituals in night clubs as animals do in the wild. In the case of animals, these movements give information about their health, age, their reproductive potential and their hormone status.

Full story here

News from the valley

Kashmir has been in the news for a while now, with national and international coverage focusing on law and order in the state and how the situation is slowly spinning out of control. The police and the army are being widely perceived as instruments of state repression. Amidst all of this, is the news that there was a huge clamor for police jobs among youth in the state, with nearly 60,000 men applying for about 3000 jobs with the state police.

It is already clear to the powers that be that the ongoing protests in Kashmir are not a result of any external propaganda, but are largely representative of the growing resentment citizens of the state feel for the central government. Young educated youth were ready, stone in hand, to stand up to the state forces. Yet, the same youth turned out in huge numbers to compete for jobs in the state machinery. Does this mean these youth value a job and food on the table more than political autonomy? If so, isn't this a clear signal to the Government of India that focusing on enhancing opportunities for economic development and taking steps to improve the standard of living will be more effective in bringing peace and stability to the valley than use of force?

A world without the big brother?

According to Thomas Friedman, the erosion of US power and influence might be catastrophic for the 'rest of us' who have been nurtured and protected for all these years.  

When the world’s only superpower gets weighed down with this much debt — to itself and other nations — everyone will feel it. How? Hard to predict. But all I know is that the most unique and important feature of U.S. foreign policy over the last century has been the degree to which America’s diplomats and naval, air and ground forces provided global public goods — from open seas to open trade and from containment to counterterrorism — that benefited many others besides us. U.S. power has been the key force maintaining global stability, and providing global governance, for the last 70 years.

Further, Friedman quotes Micheal Mandelbaum

“When Britain could no longer provide global governance, the United States stepped in to replace it. No country now stands ready to replace the United States, so the loss to international peace and prosperity has the potential to be greater as America pulls back than when Britain did.”

“Therefore, the world will be a more disorderly and dangerous place,” Mandelbaum predicts.

No system of global governance or regional alliances is likely to bail out the world either. Friedman doesn't even give them a chance. Is there likely to be better regulated markets once the free market hawks are done away with? Well, who can say...it doesn't work like that in Friedman's flat world. 


What's the remedy then? Just wait until the next big brother arrives...

Just so we are clear...

India can survive without UK aid. While we may not murmur when lectured to, we certainly won't starve in case you change your mind...


Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee 

...said during Question Hour that New Delhi has "made it clear" to the Cameron administration that "we will voluntarily surrender" aid should UK decide to cut it.

external assistance forms just 0.4 per cent of India's GDP and its share in the total budgetary expenditure on developmental schemes has gone down to 2.5 per cent from 3.4 per cent. "It is peanuts in our total development expenditure," he said.

Beyond technical fixes, focusing on inequality

"Society systematically discriminates against certain groups of people on the basis of circumstances that are not within their control"

Naila Kabeer, talking about social exclusion and the MDGs - about how numbers indicating progress made towards achieving the MDGs don't fully capture issues of inequality and social justice...

Naila Kabeer Talks About The Mdg Social Inequality Report by Ids (Uk) on Mixcloud

Swatting nonsense away

I had previously posted how silly the debate over Obama's faith sounded to me. It was also annoying to see how the oldest democracy in the world seemed to not have moved beyond these prejudices and how non-secular this made them sound...

So when I read these comments by Obama on the issue, I felt I should post it as a follow-up:

“I can't spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead” 

“trusted in the American people's capacity to get beyond all this nonsense”.

“I think my statement at the Iftar dinner in the White House was very clear... that if you can build a church... synagogue... or a Hindu temple on that site, then we cannot treat people of the Islamic faith differently, who are Americans, who are American citizens.”

“How can you say to them that somehow their religious faith is less worthy of respect under our Constitution and our system of government?” he asked, adding he would defend their right to express their feelings just as fiercely

Absolutely on the dot! Well said! Religion is no doubt an important issue for people, be it of any country, but it is sad when government offices have to make public statements regarding a political leader's faith. So its good to see Obama make this clear.