The Penny Wise

Ever wondered how your maid survives on her earnings? Like a billion others across the world, your maid too manages with less than $2 (around Rs90) a day. How would you eat two meals, educate your children, afford a home, fight emergencies and plan for old age? For her, these are everyday questions to grapple with.

But it turns out she does not live hand-to-mouth. She applies a complex combination of financial strategies to keep afloat. It is often hard work, and it can carry high costs—some of which are social and psychological, not just economic. Collecting year-long financial diaries of households in Bangladesh, India and South Africa, Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven weave the complexities of the financial lives of the poor into a readable narrative in their book Portfolios of the Poor....more

A world tour of hydrological madness

If ever I were to write a book on water, this could be the one. When the Rivers Run Dry seems an unfinished title for an unflinching look at the current water crises across the world. Fred Pearce, an accomplished science writer, elucidates the remaining half of the title in ten riveting sections to the book. Based on author's travels across thirty countries, the book provides most complete portrait of growing hydrological crises and its widespread ramifications for us all.

Pearce contends that the West is committing hydrological suicide with its water 'footprint'. One ton of water for drinking, about 50 to 100 tons around the home and as much as 2,000 tons to grow the crops that feed and clothe a person during a year cannot sustain humanity for long. And if you buy a t-shirt made of Pakistani cotton, eat Thai rice or drink coffee from Costa Rica, you may be helping reduce flow in the Indus, the Mekong and in the Amazon. Called 'virtual water trade', it uses about 1,000 cubic kilometers of water annually or the equivalent of 20 River Niles.

It really is as stark as that. Pearce has gone to great lengths to show the reader what has gone wrong with our civic and personal attitude to water use the world over, and by highlighting some of these diminishing or dried up water sources, we must rethink our actions. The immensely readable prose is no simple manual for the consumer to be less wasteful in the home; it is about such compelling facts that make the case for a new water ethos. Pearce takes the reader to often unheard of places to pepper his text with reflection, often presenting both the micro and the macro picture at the same time.

The facts and narrative create powerful imagery that is backed by penetrating analyses and passionate advocacy. It is investigative journalism at its best, advising the world's governments to stop focusing on the money and instead look at the best interests of the world's rivers, wetlands and aquifers. Pearce' dogged research and writing teaches the reader something 'new' on a subject that may be grossly known. And he is not a doomsayer because he highlights the efforts being made the world over to reclaim fresh water too. Just read it!

Whose money is it, honey?

Despite foreign direct investment driving the stock market, the issue of foreign funding to the civil society organizations is seen at a tangent. Not long ago, foreign funding was used as the basis to question the credibility of Narmada Bacchao Andolan. In effect, the petitioner's hidden intention has been to tarnish the pro-public image of the two-decade old social movement, with an aim to establish that NBA's anti-dam agenda was driven by the donors. NBA had come out unscathed but popular perception about foreign funding was nevertheless reiterated.

With three decades of experience in the field of development, Pushpa Sundar traces the history of developmental assistance and the emergence of civil society as its formidable exponent. Interestingly, over the years the levels of overseas development assistance to the government has become insignificant while the amounts going to the civil society has increased significantly. The recipients of foreign funds may have come under the home ministry's scanner; the quantum of development assistance remains miniscule in comparison to government's development portfolio.

Why does the government feel threatened and why is popular perception on foreign funded organizations' tainted? The answers to such questions are hard to come by because there are shades of grey in the developmental picture. The lure for foreign funds is of government's own making; its support mechanism smells of nepotism and its monitoring mechanism is increasingly laced with corruption. If the government's development support mechanism to civil society could clear itself of such ambiguities and be more liberal in its outlook, there is little doubt that the dependence on foreign funds and the ideological baggage it brings along would decline....more