"We take buses, cars, motorcycles until the road stops, then we walk..." Photo: FullyFunctnlPhil (flickr)

In India, members of the Dalit caste, also known as untouchables, often work as cobblers, roadsweepers, janitors, or worse. They have been discriminated against for centuries and enjoy little to no rights. And all too often, the women are illiterate and have to ask their husbands or brothers for permission to work or go to school.

But, in the Northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a small newspaper is giving Dalit women a unique opportunity to voice their concerns. Recently, the LA Times profiled Khabar Lahariya, or News Waves, a newspaper run entirely by Dalit women. Every two weeks, they print 4,000 copies of a new issue, which is estimated to reach up to 40,000 people in and around Uttar Pradesh. The paper is supported by Nirantar, a New Delhi-based NGO that works with issues of gender, education, and development.

These women are remarkable. They're involved in every aspect of the paper — from writing articles and selling ad space, to delivering papers to remote villages. "We take buses, cars, motorcycles until the road stops, then we walk," said one staffer.

They've developed a knack for shining light on local injustices, the LA Times explains, and often get the scoop on what's happening in the community from other villagers.

The paper's recent stories included alleged bribery at health clinics, a bureaucrat reported to be siphoning off money meant for widows and a piece on the brother of a powerful politician who built a house, blocking water that had gone to Dalit farmers nearby and destroying their livelihood.

The paper has received a lot of positive feedback from the surrounding communities. Residents used to complain that Dalits' issues were underrepresented in mainstream media. One shop owner tells the LA Times how much he values Khabar Lahariya as a news source:

Other papers aren't printed in our language and don't write about local news we're most interested in... This really feels like our own. I just wish it were more than eight pages so I'd have more to read.

December's Comment of the Month winner Jill Scantlan from Portland commented on Sarah Standish' post Researching Better Ways to End Poverty. She points out that community involvement is crucial to an aid program's success. She further argues that success should be measured both qualitatively and quantitatively. For her efforts, we will make a $25 donation to a project of her choice on Global Giving. Here's her comment:

This story brings up a lot of important issues concerning development projects. What is the most cost-effective way to improve literacy? Should we invest in providing lap tops for children or a mid-day meal program? How do we measure this?

I have spent a substantial amount of time observing and talking with NGOs in India who wrestle with these same issues. On the one hand, NGOs are usually bound to a government scheme, and on the other to an international aid agency. They have to prove that their projects are working and be able to measure that success in various forms of deliverables. In the end, some NGOs are successful and some make very little impact. What is the distinguishing factor?

What I have noticed is that the NGOs who use community participation in all (or most) of the stages of a project and who make the project fit the community (and not the other way around) are the most successful. In some cases, these approaches are not easily quantifiable.

J-PAL relies purely on quantitative measurements where a mixture of quantitative and qualitative would be more appropriate. A randomized sample, though statistically sound, can only tell you so much. Assessment and success goes beyond meeting targets and quotas. It is usually found in the attitudes and behavior of a community, which cannot be measured by numbers alone.

Keep writing in and share your though-provoking comments for a chance to win $25 towards the well-deserving charity of your choice!

* Lest anyone think $25 is not a lot, consider these figures from our affiliate Mercy Corps: $25 delivers clean, safe drinking water to 50 people in one of eastern Congo's sprawling displacement camps. $25 provides seeds to farmers in cyclone-devastated areas of Myanmar to plant five acres of rice. $25 gives traumatized children in Darfur 12 weeks of activities and psychological care to help them heal.

Could Wall Street's bull charge for good? Photo: iHeylen (flickr)

If Wall Street's excesses contributed to the decline of the nation's economy, could the same profit-driven environment really spawn a new generation of do-gooders?

Absolutely, says Wall Street Journal columnist David Weidner, and it's a process that's already begun, exemplified by those who seek profit by selling to poorer consumers. (I wrote about this general trend for Global Envision in "Slashing Health Care Costs, and Slashing, and Slashing", "How to Irrigate on a Shoestring", and Selling to the Poor, On Terms They Can Afford".)

Such entrepreneurs may be guided by a social conscience when they choose the products to fund and invest in and they may be willing to wait a little bit longer to turn a profit, but profit is still the end goal. "This new breed of Wall Streeter has turned the maxim 'greed is good' into 'greed can do good,'" explains Weidner.

A paragon of this model is The Acumen Fund, a non-profit venture fund that invests in business and entrepreneurial solutions to poverty. Its projects include replacing kerosene lamps with the safer and more affordable LED lamps, and pay-per-use toilets in Kenya.

Heidi Krauel, The Acumen Fund's founder, goes further "This is one of the new faces of capitalism," she says. For those just beginning to enter the world economic system, this is certainly good news.

One of J-PAL's studies tested the effectiveness of computer-assisted learning in certain Indian schools. Photo: niyam bhushan (flickr)

A research group thinks the best way to determine whether aid programs work is to evaluate them using the scientific method.

J-PAL, short for for the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, is a group of researchers - loosely affiliated with MIT - who help design and publish academic-quality studies of existing poverty alleviation programs in an effort to find out exactly what works and what doesn't. These researchers partner with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to evaluate their programs. They also offer courses for other researchers to share their methods. (Class materials are available here for free.)

As J-PAL's website explains, the key to their approach lies in randomization, which is an important part of a well-designed study:

Suppose we would like to see whether one thing (e.g. "schooling") really improves a life outcome (e.g. "health"). The natural instinct is to compare the health of those who have schooling to those who don't. But this would be like comparing apples and oranges: People who have been to school are different in so many ways from those who haven't. Perhaps they have more advantaged social backgrounds, greater access to government services and so better access to schools. And only a few of these factors can be measured and accounted for in a standard statistical analysis. So this simple comparison — those with schooling to those without — may tell us little about the effect of schooling: It may instead be the effect of any of these numerous other differences like social background. If policy are set on the basis of such apples and oranges comparisons, quite a bit of disappointment may result.

J-PAL uses this approach to evaluate existing programs. For example, J-PAL researchers cooperated with an NGO called Pratham to study how much weekly computer use could boost Indian students' academic achievement. They introduced computer-based learning only into randomly selected schools that Pratham was already serving. Students at these schools received basic computer skills training and two hours per week of independent computer time with educational software. After a year, J-PAL found that these students' math test scores had risen, but that their other skills hadn't changed significantly — and all for slightly more money than another effective Pratham program J-PAL had also evaluated.

What makes J-PAL's work innovative is that such randomized studies haven't typically been used in evaluating poverty-alleviation programs, or even in the wider field of economics.

Such data is designed to help aid organizations and governmental bodies decide the most effective way to allocate their funds. For the extra cost of designing an extra study now, J-PAL believes, more money can be directed toward the most effective programs for better poverty-alleviation strategies in the future.

Innovative practices in Indian health care are make surgeries more affordable. Photo: World Bank Photo Collection (flickr)

The numbers alone say a lot: A heart surgery that costs between $20,000 and $40,000 in the United States can cost only $2,000 in India.

The medical tourism industry has always taken advantage of lower health care costs in India and other developing countries. Some, however, are thinking beyond that. The Wall Street Journal recently profiled Dr. Devi Shetty, an Indian physician who has radically rethought the way heart surgery is managed and priced to make it more affordable than ever before.

Quite simply, Dr. Shetty is making heart surgery cheaper by doing more of it, says The Journal. The heart hospital he opened in India has 1,000 beds (the average U.S. hospital has 160 beds), and the sheer number of surgeries it performs gives it a lot of bargaining power for the equipment that it buys — carefully chosen for its cost. His physicians do more surgeries per day and repeat the same procedure more often than American doctors, giving them invaluable experience and expertise. Dr. Shetty plans to expand his private hospital complex significantly in the the next five years — a move that will give him even more leverage over suppliers.

Dr. Shetty's cost-cutting drive was propelled by a desire to make heart surgery affordable for Indians, after he understood the incompatibility of expensive health care and poverty. $2,000 for a life-saving surgery can be prohibitively expensive for some Indians, so many patients pay their medical bills through a special insurance plan developed by Dr. Shetty, in partnership with government officials from the state of Karnataka.

Dr. Shetty suspects that this kind of health care is likely to appeal to Westerners as well. He plans to open another hospital in the Cayman Islands specifically to serve Americans who want to lower their own health bills.

A homemade drip-irrigation system. Photo: Care of Creation (flickr)

Flood irrigation: that's how poor farmers in developing countries usually water their crops. It's wasteful and too water-intensive to work in the dry season, but until recently there haven't been other viable options — a traditional drip irrigation system could cost thousands of dollars.

But social entrepreneurs like Paul Polock and the California-based company, Driptech are working to change this by helping poor farmers set up low-cost drip irrigation systems. Driptech can sell their irrigation system for $30 in places like India, China and Ethiopia, because they use cheaper materials and have developed a new (top-secret) method for punching the holes in the irrigation tubes, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

As Business Week notes, the technology could be transformative:

Experts say low-cost irrigation could alter the economics of food. Subsistence farmers may be able to grow excess crops they can sell. Countries that rely on food imports could see their dependence on outsiders decline.

The innovation has allowed poor farmers to save "water, labor, and time — all while growing a valuable dry-season crop that greatly increased their annual income," boasts Driptech's website.

Driptech plans to relocate their manufacturing facilities to the countries where their products are sold. The company's blog notes that this "will help support the local economies while cutting out transportation costs and headaches."

Selling redesigned products to the poor can be a profitable business model, as some companies in India have also discovered. (I wrote about this phenomenon in "Selling to the Poor, On Terms They Can Afford"). In line with this trend, Driptech expects to make money while helping poor farmers start to turn a profit of their own.

A new, low-cost water filtration system will make it easier for poor Indians to access clean drinking water. Photo: Jackol (flickr)

Here's some conventional marketing wisdom: People who live on less than $2 per day simply aren't a worthwhile target demographic.

But recently, some Indian companies are challenging such ossified thinking with innovative products designed to fit the needs of India's poor, reports The Wall Street Journal:

Such inventions represent a fundamental shift in the global order of innovation. Until recently, the West served rich consumers and then let its products and technology filter down to poorer countries. Now, with the developed world mired in a slump and the developing world still growing quickly, companies are focusing on how to innovate, and profit, by going straight to the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

As the Wall Street Journal explains, Indian companies started to change the way they looked at impoverished consumers after they snapped up low-priced cell phones. Then companies began to design products that they hoped would find a similarly huge demand. Soon, Tata Motors released the Nano car, a small $2000 vehicle that made car ownership a possibility for a whole new slice of Indians since it sold for less than half the price of the next-cheapest car on the Indian market. Tata plans to export a more luxurious version of the Nano to Europe — providing an example of how the goods designed for local markets could increase global competition between Indian and Western companies.

There are several other examples of products redesigned with the poor in mind. Cheap battery-powered refrigerators are a huge help to families without electricity in their homes. The solar-powered cell phone base station won third place in The Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovation Awards earlier this year. And the introduction of mobile banking is revolutionizing banking and money transfers in rural areas via cell phones in many poor countries.

It's a newer way of thinking about poverty, and one driven by bottom-line concerns: How can firms sell the poor what they need now, rather than waiting until they have the money to buy what others already have?

A Mercy Corps small business loan helped Najeeba expand her successful baby cradle business in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps

Over the past decade, Mercy Corps’ microfinance services have lent more than $1.5 billion, reaching more than one million people. Twelve Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) founded and supported by Mercy Corps operate all over the world, with 270,000 active clients — 65 percent of them are women. To better serve those excluded from formal financial services, Mercy Corps is working with these MFIs to develop and offer savings, remittances, and micro-insurance services as well.

I recently sat down with Zhanna Zhakupova and Jim Anderson who were in town for a microfinance conference hosted by Mercy Corps, to find out more about Mercy Corps microfinance programs and how the global economic crisis is impacting microfinance loans. Zhanna is the Executive Director of the Asian Credit Fund (ACF), headquartered in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Jim is Mercy Corps’ Financial Services Manager and works from UlaanBaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. Together, they have experience working in countries as diverse as Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Japan, Bosnia, Poland and Afghanistan.

Haley Dillan: Jim, tell me a little bit about Mercy Corps’ use of Microfinance.

Jim Anderson: Microfinance is an integral part of what we’re [Mercy Corps] doing as an agency. Mercy Corps works with a group of well-established MFIs to complement other programming. All these MFIs provide loans to individuals and small businesses, and in Mongolia and Indonesia our MFI affiliates also offer deposits. Many support agriculture and offer consumer loans for purposes like tuition payments and health care costs. A micro-loan can range from $65 to a Guatemalan woman raising chickens or piglets, to $7,000 for a Kazakh businessperson.

Microfinance is a great tool because, when managed correctly, it is sustainable. Projects can be established and continue on a sustainable basis: they don’t require ongoing injections of donor money. As the NGO, you create the legacy, and then it often continues independantly.

Haley: Why are the majority of loans extended to women?

Jim: Typically, women are the more common borrowers. From a broad source of statistics, women are more reliable borrowers. They invest their business profits to support the family — educating, feeding, housing, and providing health care for their children. As of this June, Kompanion in Kyrgyzstan had over 91,000 clients, of whom 98 percent were women. What’s the percentage for Asian Credit Fund, Zhanna?

Zhanna Zhakupova: About 93 percent of ACF loans are to women.

Jim: Yes, and the XacBank in Mongolia has over 63,000 clients, and women comprise about 55 percent of that. However, in certain countries, it’s not always clear that just because the borrower is a woman, she’s the one in charge of the money. In Afghanistan, for example, a female borrower may just give the loan money to her husband, and it’s hard to track that.

Zhanna: Also, men are less interested in small loans. When they think about business, they think about “big.” And after the global economic crisis, group lending has grown significantly, and women dominate group lending. Men are more reluctant to join groups.

Haley: What other impacts has the global economic crisis had on microfinance? Have you changed your lending criteria? Has it affected the ability for applicants to repay their loans?

Zhanna: As I mentioned, our portfolio has shifted towards group lending since 2008. So, yes, the global economic crisis definitely caused a shift in our lending. In Kazakhstan, the crisis has been quite severe. The GDP growth was averaging about 8 percent annually since 2000, from oil and mineral resources. A pretty strong middle class had emerged, especially in the two largest cities Almaty and Astana. The economic crisis really affected this middle class; the crisis led to a sharp decline in real estate and that hit a lot of people. It seemed like everyone had loans that were secured by real estate… and when the real estate bubble burst, MFI loans were under water.

The banks stopped lending, because real estate was the key piece of collateral for most people, and it has continued to fall in value. No one had sufficient assets to meet tougher bank requirements, and so couldn’t qualify for loans after the global economic crisis. Lenders accumulated loan repayments, but refused to relend that money, sitting on it instead of pumping it back into the economy. No liquidity — no lending — no economic development — falling living standards.

In the rural areas, lending was completely frozen. When I recently visited rural areas served by ACF, every village asked us to open a branch. Small loans were in big demand but no one was lending. Now, Asian Credit Fund has about $1 million dollars in group loans, with the average loan size at around $500 per person.

Haley: What's the difference between non-profit and for-profit microlending? Does Mercy Corps work with for-profit lenders?

Jim: Actually, microlending is for-profit in most areas of the world, particularly Latin America and Central Asia. Non-profit lenders are more often located in places like India and Bangladesh. So most of Mercy Corps' microfinance work is with for-profit MFIs, many of which source funding from for-profit socially responsible investors (SRIs).

If these SRI lenders were to calculate the true risk of the loans they’re extending to MFIs, the interest rate would be so unmanageably high — possibly 60 or 70 percent in places like Tajikistan or Afghanistan. But the individuals who invest with SRIs are willing to forgo a certain amount of return because they want to encourage social improvements by lending to developing countries. As a result, SRIs can lend to MFIs at affordable interest rates.

In order to help MFIs attract capital to expand and serve more clients, Mercy Corps utilizes various sources of investment, including equity and debt, typically with SRIs.

Haley: Is there an idea or sentiment that you are taking away from the conference?

Jim: At the conference participants included a diverse group of organizations, culturally, geographically and in terms of business models, yet we all face similar challenges and issues, and it’s great that we have an opportunity to come together and talk about that.

Zhanna: Yes, everyone was talking about development, and long-term goals.

A street dentist in India. Photo: Christian Luna (flickr)

Would you want an unlicensed dentist working on your teeth?

You might if, like many of India’s poor, you lacked the money to see a professional. By your willingness to pay for these services, you’d also be creating a kind of employment for someone who could never find work in a traditional medical office.

Workers like these amateur dentists are part of India's informal sector, made up of the small-business employees like cleaners, agricultural workers, and hawkers of street goods who work for cash without a contract or benefits. Although India is best-known for its high-tech economy, the Indian government estimates that more than 93 percent of Indian workers are informally employed.

The informal sector didn't benefit much from India's tech boom, but its extra-stretchy quality actually makes India's economy stronger, says businessman Semil Shah. Why? For starters, he explains, the informal economy "provides markets for goods and services that may not have been otherwise traded." Others also see the the informal economy as a safety net for workers, since it gives more work possibilities to those who've lost jobs in the formal sector. Because of this, the informal sector may help sustain India through the global economic crisis, reports CNN.

However, maintaining a large informal economy isn't the long-term answer for India's poor, many researchers say. Life in the informal sector is harsh, since employment is often uncertain and poorly-paid. Moreover, working conditions aren't always good and competition can be stiff, especially when workers from the formal sector flood back in. Without a safety net of their own, informal workers hit the ground hard when they fall.

Despite all the drawbacks, many out-of-work Indians would probably agree that the uncertainty of informal work trumps the certainty of no work at all.

September's winning comment was sent in by Alok Amatya of Portland, Oregon. Alok commented on our post Indian Girls Throw Punches at Poverty, and mentions how boxing is opening new avenues for and instilling self-confidence in Muslim women in India. For being chosen as this month's winner, Alok will get $25 to donate to the cause of his choice through Global Giving.

The WSJ article about Muslim girls from India taking up boxing was a very well written one. It puts in perspective the kind of social conservativeness that Muslim women like Ms Fatma have to battle to achieve self-actualization through a sport like boxing that her neighbors deem fit for boys only.

Traditional gender barriers prevent women like Ms Fatma from challenging the male social supremacy that reserves positions of any power or prestige for men, thus leaving for women only domestic chores and odd jobs like sewing, and lowering the female self esteem.

A sport like boxing is a compromise really—by pursuing it, the Muslim women does not challenge the economic supremacy of the male in the family, i.e. the father or the husband. Yet the value of the self-confidence inspired in women by being good at a complex sport—and at that, one presumed by their society to be fit exclusively for males—is immense.

It is very heartening to read about the fathers of women like Ms Fatma and Ms Shabnam standing up against social pressure for the sake of their daughters’ emotional and social well-being. Perhaps such fathers have understood that only feeding and clothing their daughters does not making them complete human beings. Also heartening to read is that women from these societies who excel at sports can not only take part in tournaments at various levels, but are also invited to join the police force or the railway because of their talent. Such a segway into other occupations traditionally reserved for men might inspire a wider social change, that would finally benefit both women and men.

Keep writing in and share your though-provoking comments for a chance to win $25 towards the well-deserving charity of your choice!

* Lest anyone think $25 is not a lot, consider these figures from our affiliate Mercy Corps: $25 delivers clean, safe drinking water to 50 people in one of eastern Congo's sprawling displacement camps. $25 provides seeds to farmers in cyclone-devastated areas of Myanmar to plant five acres of rice. $25 gives traumatized children in Darfur 12 weeks of activities and psychological care to help them heal.

The Indus River has the potential to provide hydroelectric power to millions - who will hold power over that power is what's causing a logjam. Photo: Michael Foley (flickr)

India and Pakistan have both vowed to build hydroelectric dams along an upper branch of the Indus river, only 70 kilometers apart from each other. Two new hydroelectric power sources would seem like good news for these energy-hungry economies, but there's a catch. According to the terms of the 1960 Indus Water Treaty between the two countries, there's only space for one hydroelectric plant in this part of the long-disputed Jammu and Kashmir valley —
and that's the plant that's completed first.

As the race heats up — India has forecast completion for 2016, and Pakistan one year later — Pakistan hopes to edge past India's projected finish line by hiring on Chinese companies to speed up progress.

So what else is at stake in this standoff? Experts, on the condition of anonymity, recently told The Rising Kashmir Daily Newspaper that Pakistan is reaching out to China to give them an edge over India and compensate for their geographical disadvantage, saying,

Pakistan, being the lower riparian state, faces geographical disadvantage. It fears that India's Kishenganga project will have a devastating effect on its hydro-power plans, besides adversely affecting 1,33,209 hectares of agricultural land in Pakistan administered Kashmir. To stem these fears it has signed up with Chinese companies to complete the project and secure priority rights for the river.

A recent Ground Report article regarding SAAMA News correspondent Ibrahim Malick’s report that at least 20 different UN bodies concur that India and Pakistan are the two likeliest combatants for any near-future water war further illuminates what's at stake in the ongoing Indo-Pak water disputes. Ground Report is quick to point out that these two countries are both nuclear-armed, making the situation, and the potential global consequences, all the more serious.

Telltale precursors to this potential water war are already abundant on both sides of the border, including the unambiguous recommendation by the Pakistani Urdu press for war as a solution to the problem. India, in a more circuitous approach, is enforcing "punishment through water"on Pakistan for their lack of action regarding the recent terrorism attacks in India. Clearly, the prospect for a quick, effective resolution is grim.

As Indus water commissioners from India and Pakistan continue to meet in hopes of resolving issues relating to water resources and hydroelectric power generation in the region, the true losers in the South Asian water wars may end up being the forgotten residents of the very valleys the Indus River and its tributaries flow through.

According to The Bombay News,"electricity remains a distant dream for the residents of the Gurez valley of Jammu and Kashmir despite ample water resources existing in the region." Even though the Kishenganga hydroelectric plant is being built in the Gurez valley, the power from the plant will be transmitted to other, more populous and politically influential Indian states such as Himchal Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh.

Shazia Tabasum, a student and Gurez valley resident, told The Bombay News, "[t]here is so much water here. The government has to take steps to put an end to the power crisis. The electricity is supplied through diesel generators. As long as diesel is there we get electricity, but if the diesel goes out of stock, we live in dark and have to wait for fifteen days to one month for the next stock to reach our place."

Unless the Indian government responds to pleas like these from local residents, they'll have to continue getting by with two to three hours of diesel-generated electricity a day. And by the looks of it, the government has its hands full making the power available in the first place.

The G-20 is meeting this week in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Chaired by President Barack Obama, the purpose of the summit is to, “review the progress made since the Washington and London Summits and discuss further actions to assure a sound and sustainable recovery from the global financial and economic crisis.” I’ve heard of the G-8, but the G-20? I began to wonder about this alphanumeric soup of organizations. Who are they and what are they concerned with? The following scorecard should help interested followers of this subject keep track of the major players.

The G-6: Organized in 1975 by the finance ministers of Germany and France who were frustrated with the formality and structure of larger international meetings, the G-6 and subsequent evolutions of this body are strictly informal bodies that meet to discuss economic issues of mutual interest. After the creation of the G-8, the term G-6 is now used to refer to the six most populous members of the European Union. The member countries are: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan

The G-7: Formed in 1976, this is an informal forum for the finance members of seven big industrial economies to discuss economic issues and seek agreement. Member countries include: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States. Now also includes the European Union.

The G-8: An evolution of the G-7, membership grew to include Russia. The European Union is a limited member; it cannot host a meeting or hold the presidency of the body. Members are: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Russia. European Union (limited member)

The G-8 plus Five: Recognizing the growing influence of other countries, the original group sometimes broadens their meetings by including the Outreach Five. As with all meetings, other countries are sometimes invited to attend. Members: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Russia. European Union (limited member) Plus: Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa.

The G-20: According to their website, “[t]he G-20 was created as a response both to the financial crises of the late 1990s and a growing recognition that key emerging-market countries were not adequately included in the core of global economic discussion and governance.” Where the earlier groups (G-6 through G-8) were organized around the industrialized countries of the world, the G-20 begins to bring emerging economies into the dialog. Their first meeting was in Berlin, Germany. The Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the President of the World Bank, plus the chairs of the International Monetary and Financial Committee and Development Committee of the IMF and World Bank, also participate in G-20 meetings on an ex-officio basis.

The G-20 is made up of the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, European Central Bank

The G-33: The name for a group of developing countries that coordinates on trade and economic issues. It was created in order to help group countries which were all facing similar problems and give a unified voice to countries that were traditionally excluded from discussions among the industrialized countries. Members: Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Botswana, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guyana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Laos, Mauritius, Madagascar, Mongolia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Senegal, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Tanzania, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

There are other groups variously labeled as G-8, G-20, G-33, and even N-11 (countries which Goldman Sachs considered in 2005 to have a high potential of becoming the world’s largest economies this century: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam).

One of the best, reliable, sources of information about these groups and their members may be found on the websites of the World Trade Organization and the previously mentioned G-20.

You can Track the ongoing discussions of the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit here. But be prepared for slow page loading. It is a very busy website.

Credit problems in the Indian city of Ramanagaram hint of a broader microfinance credit bubble, says a recent Wall Street Journal article. According to the article, part of the problem is that lenders are less concerned about alleviating poverty and more concerned about turning a profit.

Traditionally, microlenders were nonprofits focused on community service. In recent years, however, many of the larger microlending firms have registered with the Indian central bank as a type of for-profit finance company. That places them under greater regulatory scrutiny, but also gives them wider access to funding. This change opened the door to more private-equity money. Of the 54 private-equity deals (totaling $1.19 billion) in India's banking and finance sector in the past 18 months, microfinance accounted for 16 deals worth at least $245 million...

Protected by high interest rates, lenders are handing out loans without ensuring that the borrowers can repay. The excess of available funds and large number of lenders provide a opportunity for debtors to pay their interest by taking on yet more debt.

Many debtors in Ramanagaram have borrowed themselves into a trap. They take out new loans to pay the interest on existing loans — rather than investing the money or paying off the principal — and then find themselves unable to continue paying when the debt load grows too large. Lending procedures should prevent this from happening, but they haven't in Ramanagaram.

Take the example of the woman in this Wall Street Journal video. After borrowing $150 to invest in her husband's business, she took on four more loans, each to pay for the interest on the prior loan. She is now caught in a debt trap, her current debt is nearly equal to her annual income.

Lenders are responsible for checking if a borrower has excessive debt. But at least one admits to the Wall Street Journal that they only check with the largest of loans.

In Ramanagaram, over-borrowing is creating an anti-microfinance backlash. Civic leaders are questioning the value of microfinance and Islamic clerics are telling local Muslims to stop taking on microfinance loans.

Microfinance is still one of the only ways for the world's poor to access credit, a piece in the Economist reminds us. The vast majority of borrowers repay their loans. More stringent supervision of lenders should prevent a worsening of the crisis.

Women in SHGs spoke about bright futures for their daughters and want to work towards increasing the educational opportunities that are available to them in their village of Karauli. Photo: Carmina Rinker

I recently returned from a study and service-leaning trip in India. While was there I traveled with a small group of Portland State University students and faculty, visiting several grassroots NGOs working with women's microfinance groups in Maharashtra. In this part of the world, Self Help Groups (SHGs) go beyond lending, they also are tackling issues like domestic violence, health care and politics.

Sitting in matching blue Saris with gold trim, about ten women are seated inside a small room passing chai and biscuits to their foreign guests. They discuss their business ventures, their children, and ask our small group of American students questions about our lives in the United States. One mother is beaming with pride as she coaches her small daughter to recite a poem, "Airplane, Airplane" in perfect English.

With the growing popularity of Kiva.org and the heightened awareness of the Grameen bank, many of us Westerners are just now discovering the impact of microfinance programs as a tool of poverty alleviation and women's empowerment. But for hundreds of women in the village of Karauli in Maharashtra, India, this is old news. Women here have been active in Self Help Groups (SHGs) for close to a decade or more, and in this time their participation has extended far beyond the collective savings, loans, that are the most basic elements of microfinance schemes. Self Help Groups are groups of women who come together to save money collectively, and from their collective savings they can take individual loans in order to make repairs on their house, buy goods for their microenterprises, send their children to school, or for whatever purpose they need it for. In addition the SHGs act as a social support network through which the women can come together to address individual and broader social issues such as domestic violence, women's health, and sanitation issues in their communities. SHGs differ from Joint Liability Groups (as used by the Grameen Bank), in that they usually have about 10-20 members whose loans come directly from the group's own savings instead of from a bank or Microfinance Institution. In order to mobilize more credit for larger loans, groups of SHGs often come together to form a Federation.

While visiting two of thirty or so SHGs that are active in Karauli, a village with a population of around 7,000, women spoke about taking out loans to send their children to the university in the nearby city of Pune, large entrepreneurial ventures such as opening a hotel, and accumulating a collective group savings of Rs 8.5 lakhs (equivalent to about 17,000 US dollars). Yet beyond the financial benefit that these women enjoy through their participation in the SHGs (as well as the pride and confidence that goes along with it), the women also spoke about other changes that extend beyond their individual and family levels, and to their greater communities. This ranges from launching village clean-ups to rid their communities of litter, participating in village politics (panchayats). The women who have adopted the blue sari uniform to wear to their monthly meetings organized a 100 Woman March to the Office of the Minister of Irrigation of Maharastra to raise their concerns over water availability and sanitation. This group has been together for over eight years, and during that time every women in the room — about half of their 20 members — has served a term as SHG leader. They explain that before joining the SHG they had little to no interaction and involvement in public spaces, yet with the leadership skills they have now developed as well as the mutual trust and social capital that has been built through the group, they now feel less inhibited to be active in the public domain.

These SHGs have been organized and facilitated by the NGO Chaitanya, based in the nearby town of Rajgurunagar. Chaitanya came into existence in 1993, and began by incorporating microfinance programs using SHGs in rural areas. Today they have expanded to include many other programs that address issues of livelihood and agriculture, legal needs, education, and health of the rural poor.

Boxing is opening new doors for some Muslim girls from India. Photo: flickr(slack12)

An article in Friday's Wall Street Journal looks at how boxing is giving Muslim girls in India an alternative to their "practically scripted" life.

For many of these girls, the Wall Street Journal says life goes like this: "they stay home, help their mothers, and get married so they aren't a burden to their families anymore."

Sabihal Hussain, a women's studies professor at a New Delhi university explains how boxing is opening up new doors for the girls.

They find (boxing) as a way of coming out from conservativeness. They have very limited role — poor Muslim women — in the public sphere. So thes women, these boxers, they find a way to come out and this is an outlet for them to fight poverty.

The boxers train hard and those that are good enough to compete internationally, fight for cash prizes. But for many girls, boxing can be a gateway into a job with the the police or land them a college scholarship for a spot on the university sports team.