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Grameen Bank
Grameen Bank believes that lack of access to credit is the biggest constraint for the rural poor. If the poor are provided credit on reasonable terms, they themselves best know how to increase their incomes. Grameen Bank targets and mobilizes the poor and creates social and financial conditions so that they receive credit by identifying a source of self-employment in familiar rural non-farm activities. The Bank's method of targeting the poor is effective as it mobilizes only those who are willing to bear the costs of group formation, training, and monitoring each other's activities, and those who are satisfied with the relatively small sums they can borrow and repay. To better meet its ultimate goal of social and economic development, Grameen Bank targets women more than men. By doing so, it directly channels credit to the poorest and the least empowered and helps improve the living standards of their families. Along with providing credit, Grameen Bank offers guidelines to members for codes of conduct and activities aimed at improving their social and financial conditions. It also provides training to women in maternal health, nutrition, and childcare to generate greater demand for basic health care services. Lending entails high risk of loan default due to adverse selection of borrowers and disability of lenders to enforce the loan contracts. Contrary to the practice of formal finance, Grameen Bank lends (in small amounts) to the poor based on group responsibility where individual access to credit depends on group from bad ones. Unlike other development banks, Grameen Bank mobilizes savings as an integral part of lending. Each member is required to save Taka 1 each week and buy a Grameen Bank share worth Taka 100. In addition, each borrower contributes 5 percent of the loan amount to a group fund and Taka 5 for every 1,000 Takas above loan size greater than Taka 1,000 to an emergency fund. These savings mobilization schemes provide protection of loans against default, an internal source of finance, and a stake for the members in Bank operations. In 1993, with 1,039 branches covering almost half of Bangladesh's villages, the Bank served more than 1.8 million borrowers and disbursed $169 million. By 1993, cumulative member savings totaled over $218 million. Almost 94 percent of the Bank's members are poor women, accounting for nearly 70 percent of savings mobilized, and receiving over 80 percent of the total loans disbursed. Its loan recovery rate has been consistently over 90 percent compared with rates from 25 to 50 percent for other financial institutions in Bangladesh. Contrary to common belief, Grameen's experience is that women are better credit risks with higher loan recovery rates than men (97 percent compared to 89 percent in 1992), and that the dropout rate is lower for women (15 percent) than for men (25 percent). The Grameen model is being replicated in more than 30 countries and the World Bank has provided a grant of $2 million for its replication in low-income countries. While sophisticated econometric analysis is underway, preliminary analysis suggests that Grameen Bank has generated a number of benefits both at the household and village level. At the household level, the benefits from program participation include changes in income, employment, assets accumulation, networth, and other household welfare indicators (such as contraceptive use, school enrollment of children, etc.). Program participation has enabled members to enhance their assets and networth. For example, a program participating household owns 56 percent more resources and 51 percent more networth than a nonparticipating household. Program participation has also increased calorie intake, especially among female household members. The incidence of poverty is substantially reduced among program participants. Labor force participation, especially among women, is higher among participants than nonparticipants; women's labor force participation is 66 percent among program participants compared to 52 percent for non participants. The school participation rate of girls is also higher for participants (57 percent) than for nonparticipants (36 percent). Program participation also increases the use of contraceptives, better toilet facilities, and better drinking water. In addition, program placement generates income gains for the poor as a whole through its impacts on the local resource allocation. For example, the daily male wage is 23 percent higher in program villages compared with nonprogram villages. Even after controlling for village characteristics, the study finds that up to 11 percent of the 23 percent wage increase is due to Grameen Bank program placement.
Apurba Chakravorty
Recession
As the US Recession looms like a dark cloud over our business plans-. it would be well to pause and consider how to make it go away. Wherever I talk to Indian CEOs, I get the impression they are just crossing their fingers and hoping it goes away by itself. Which it won't. Even if it does this time, it will come and hover over us again, sooner or later. Of course, there is a silver lining even in this cloud - the recession will most likely reduce US consumption, close the current account deficit, and stabilize the dollar.. at a cost. Banks seem to be using the capital infusion for all sorts of things other than lending money. No joy there.. simply cutting interest rates isn't going to help, either. When financial institutions are afraid to lend and people are afraid to borrow, in what Paul Krugman calls a 'Crisis of Faith', fiddling with the Federal Funds rate will be about as effective as Nero's fiddling was. The engine oil has gotten contaminated this time (for that is what the financial markets really are), and only a complete cleaning out of the engine will help. ..which will take time! One common ploy, not even easy to adopt, really, is to shift focus to European markets rather than the US. Which would only put off the evil day just a bit, since it is quite certain that European economies are closely tied to the US economy anyway. So let us dismiss these easy answers and bend our minds to what an Indian company, acting on its own, can do. Always a good thing to do, any company can shed 10% of its cost without any real pain, anyway. This is as good an opportunity as any to remind IT's so-called 'knowledge workers' that 20% raise year after year, for doing the exact same work they did last year, is not the natural order of things. But not everyone has been so lucky, especially in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, so belt tightening can only go so far. When our US client is nervous and unwilling to invest, and so puts his own expansion plans on hold, the one thing we can do is propose something different than the tried and tested 'time and materials' or even 'price for guaranteed volumes' proposition. It may not be enough to point out that outsourcing will save him money ' when he is contemplating 100% saving by not launching that expansion or change initiative at all! We must realize that the client is really not sure, either, whether the recession is for real, and, even if it is, whether it will affect his business, or not. Hedging his bets is what he is contemplating. How can we help him move forward? Can we offer him a business proposition where we share risk - share in the upside (and downside) rather than simply get a fixed revenue and manage costs (which is what almost all Indian companies do, even the best of them)? For instance, IT services company need to start offering customers a fee per user (customer's customer) or royalty models rather than '60 man-months to build this system'. If the client does well, we do well. Needless to say, it also means we have to · learn how to assess the client's prospects in his market · learn how to actually help him sell better in his markets Which means we will have to think like venture capitalists and investors rather than suppliers! Quite a change, but well within our capabilities. We just need to use them. Another solution is brand building. Brands are relatively recession proof due to their emotional hold. It is time to pay more than lip-service to the notion of being 'preferred partner'.. move it from the corporate ppt to reality!
Before and after-Olympics
The Olympic Games is an international multi-sport event established for both summer and winter games. There have been two generations of the Olympic Games; the first were the Ancient Olympic Games held at Olympia, Greece. The second, known as the Modern Olympic Games, were first revived with a modern international Olympic Games held in 1859 in Athens, Greece. The first modern international was sponsored by the Greek philanthropist Evangelis Zappas and pre-dates the foundation of the International Olympic Committee. The modern Olympics feature the Summer Games and Winter Games. The Paralympic and Youth Olympic Games are variations on the Modern Olympic Movement. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was founded in 1894 on the initiative of a French nobleman, Pierre Frédy, Baron de Coubertin. His vision was to bring together amateur athletes from around the world to compete in a variety of events. The IOC has become the governing body of the "Olympic Movement," a conglomeration of sporting federations that are responsible for the organization of the Games. The evolution of the Olympic Movement has forced the IOC to change Coubertin's time-honored ideals. The original vision of the pure amateur athlete had to change under the pressure of corporate sponsorships and political regimes intent on the creation of sports "dynasties". Participation in the Games has increased to the point that nearly every nation on earth is represented. This growth has created numerous challenges; including political boycotts, the use of performance enhancing drugs, bribery of officials, and terrorism. While the Olympic Movement is forced to address issues never before conceived by Coubertin, the Olympics continue to grow in the face of these challenges. The Games encompass many rituals and symbols that were established during their infancy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most of these traditions are displayed in the opening and closing ceremonies, and the medal presentations. Despite the complexity of the current modern Games, the focus remains on the Olympic motto: Citius Altius Fortius - Faster, Higher, Stronger. There are many myths surrounding the origin of the ancient Olympic Games; the most popular of which identifies Heracles and his father Zeus as the progenitors of the Games. According to the legend, Zeus held sporting events in honor of his defeat of Cronus, and succession to the throne of heaven. Heracles, being his eldest son, defeated his brothers in a running race and was crowned with a wreath of wild olive branches. It is Heracles who first called the games Olympic, and established the custom of holding them every 4 years. The legend diverges at this point. One popular story claims that after Heracles completed his 12 labors, he went on to build the Olympic stadium and surrounding buildings as an honor to Zeus. After the stadium was complete, he walked in a straight line for 200 strides and called this distance a "stadion" (Latin: stadium, "stage"), which later also became a unit of distance.
Environment
The coal, oil, and natural gas that drive the industrial world's economy all contain carbon inhaled by plants hundreds of millions of years ago-carbon that now is returning to the atmosphere through smokestacks and exhaust pipes, joining emissions from forest burned to clear land in poorer countries. Carbon dioxide is foremost in an array of gases from human activity that increase the atmosphere's ability to trap heat. (Methane from cattle, rice fields, and landfills, and the chlorofluorocarbons in some refrigerators and air conditioners are others.) Few scientists doubt that this greenhouse warming of the atmosphere is already taking hold. Melting glaciers, earlier springs, and a steady rise in global average temperature are just some of its harbingers. By rights it should be worse. Each year humanity dumps roughly 8 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere, 6.5 billion tons from fossil fuels and 1.5 billion from deforestation. But less than half that total, 3.2 billion tons, remains in the atmosphere to warm the planet. Where is the missing carbon? "It's a really major mystery if you think about it," says Wofsy, an atmospheric scientist at Harvard University. His research site in the Harvard Forest is apparently not the only place where nature is breathing deep and helping save us from ourselves. Forests, grasslands, and the waters of the oceans must be acting as carbon sinks. They steal back roughly half of the carbon dioxide we emit, slowing its buildup in the atmosphere and delaying the effects on climate. Who can complain? No one, for now. But the problem is that scientists can't be sure that this blessing will last, or whether, as the globe continues to warm, it might even change to a curse if forests and other ecosystems change from carbon sinks to sources, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere than they absorb. The doubts have sent researchers into forests and rangelands, out to the tundra and to sea, to track down and understand the missing carbon. This is not just a matter of intellectual curiosity. Scorching summers, fiercer storms, altered rainfall patterns and shifting species-the disappearance of sugar maples from New England, for example-are some of the milder changes that global warming might bring. And humanity is on course to add another 200 to 600 parts per million to atmospheric carbon dioxide by late in the century. At that level, says Princeton University ecologist Steve Pacala, "all kinds of terrible things could happen and the universe of terrible possibilities is so large that probably some of them will." Coral reefs could vanish; deserts could spread; currents that ferry heat from the tropics to northern regions could change course, perhaps chilling the British Isles and Scandinavia while the rest of the globe keeps warming. If nature withdraws its helping hand-if the carbon sinks stop absorbing some of our excess carbon dioxide-we could be facing drastic changes even before 2050, a disaster too swift to avoid. But if the carbon sinks hold out or even grow, we might have extra decades in which to wean the global economy from carbon-emitting energy sources. Some scientists and engineers believe that by understanding natural carbon sinks, we may be able to enhance them or even create our own places to safely jail this threat to global climate. The backdrop for these hopes and fears is a natural cycle as real as your own breathing and as abstract as the numbers on Wofsy's instruments. In 1771, about the time of the first stirrings of the industrial revolution and its appetite for fossil fuel, an English minister grasped key processes of the natural carbon cycle. In a series of ingenious experiments, Joseph Priestley found that flames and animals' breath "injure" the air in a sealed jar, making it unwholesome to breathe. But a green sprig of mint, he found, could restore its goodness. Priestley could not name the gases responsible, but we know now that the fire and respiration used up oxygen and gave off carbon dioxide. The mint reversed both processes. Photosynthesis took up the carbon dioxide, converted it into plant tissue, and gave off oxygen as a by-product. The world is just a bigger jar. Tens of billions of tons of carbon a year pass between land and the atmosphere: given off by living things as they breathe and decay and taken up by green plants, which produce oxygen. A similar traffic in carbon, between marine plants and animals, takes place within the waters of the ocean. And nearly a hundred billion tons of carbon diffuse back and forth between ocean and atmosphere.