In March we wrote on this magazine’s March issue on the Gujurati Model. Well, the April version of Pragati has been released with a focus on farmers in India. Click on the image below to download the issue in .pdf format. [Source: Atanu Dey]

In what could be an interesting example of a Public-Private Partnership in the pharmaceutical sector, India’s largest drug-maker has entered into an agreement with the Department of Biotechnology to push for discovering new drugs to treat tuberculosis. The Department of Biotechnology will provide a three-year grant to Ranbaxy as per the agreement to conduct research [...]

Meena Gupta, a secretary at the Ministry of Environment and Forests, claims that the Indian government will soon add amendments to municipal solid waste management regulations, and highlighted the private sector’s role in exploring new projects. Merinews, a citizen journalism news portal, quoted Ms. Gupta as saying: sustainable waste management could materialise only if service delivery [...]

BoP Energy and beyond: BP has built a new stove for the BoP market that produces much fewer emissions than the typical wood burning stoves. Scaling up, the government predicts that by 2017, 10% of total transport fuel will come from biofuels. In order to improve public transportation in Hyderbad and the surrounding area, the [...]

While my writings in the past have strongly pushed for the establishment of better metrics in quantifying social impact, the reliance on such metrics is not immune to negative outcomes. One such negative outcome is when social investors become so concerned with their own metrics that they lose sight of the larger picture — the [...]

Here are some updates on two stories that have occurred in the last few days within the green space. 1. Emergent Ventures has raised Rs 40 Crore in financing. IDFC Private Equity appears to be the first private equity firm to invest in a carbon credit advisory firm. Emergent Venture’s assists companies in the origination [...]

Update: A recent Times of India article discusses the actual effectiveness of the Public Interest Litigation provision and its current troubles. You can read the article here. An NGO called Cancer Patient Aids Association (CPAA) has embarked on a campaign to mandate compulsory licensing for 20 different drugs used to treat cancer sufferers. These drugs [...]

For your reading pleasure: International Relations: The India-Africa summit kicked off with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promising to ease access from the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Said Singh, “under this scheme, India shall unilaterally provide preferential market access for exports from all the 50 least developed countries.” Green Energy: As we have been covering [...]

Hot off the news that M-Cril will be launching their own social capital exchange, as reported by Santhosh, and also the plans by Xigi.net to create a social capital index that I spoke about some time back, Credit Suisse plans to launch its own Social Responsibility Index. As reported by Microcapital.org: Credit Suisse will launch [...]

In a recent interview with Fortune Magazine, Muhammad Yunus beautifully articulated his dream of a “Digital Aladdin’s Lamp”, which would provide poor women around the world with access to global markets and trends for local benefit: “A genie comes out of it and asks, ‘What can I do for you, ma’am?’ And she says ‘I [...]