The UN General Assembly assigned 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation as part of its Water for Life campaign, and World Water Day is on March 20. With that in mind, Barefoot College’s approach to water is worth highlighting. Barefoot College is an organization based in Rajasthan that believes solutions to rural problems lie [...]

With the advent of new socially minded technological ventures such as SMS-driven blood donations or cellphone-accessible teaching aids, it isn’t too surprising that legal services are now also available online.  Wait, this isn’t something new, is it?  Well, actually it is – at least in India.  The name of the website is AdvocateKhoj, and the [...]

As mentioned in pluGGd.in, a new virtual stock trading portal named Khelostocks has just been launched in India.  Khelostock’s mission is as follows: Khelostocks is a portal dedicated to educating and empowering retail investors.  Khelostocks helps budding investors to experience the dynamics of real time stocks trading at zero cost and zero risk basis. Here [...]

The Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) and Microcredit Ratings International Limited (M-CRIL) recently released the “Indian Microfinance Review,” 2007.  The trends described in the report are based on M-CRIL’s sample of 58 rated and MIX’s 37 reporting MFIs.  An analysis from Microcapital.org follows: This review reports that the majority of MFI’s are located in Southern India. This is [...]

In an increasingly globalized and shrinking world, migration of human beings is becoming more and more common. Whether in pursuit of education, economic opportunity, or greater freedom, migrants are the modern adaptation of nomads. Of all the links created due to this phenomenon, migrants sending remittances home particularly has a large potential impact on the [...]

According to OneWorld South Asia, the Women’s World Summit Foundation (WWSF) is seeking nominations for its Annual Prize for Women’s Creativity in Rural Life: All over the world, rural women are an integral and vital force in the development processes that are the key to socio-economic progress. The Women’s World Summit Foundation (WWSF) invites nominations [...]

Headlines: Free lunch scheme for pregnant women in PHCs to be extended In yet another maternal care project aimed at benefiting rural women, the State government has decided to provide free food to all pregnant women who visit primary health centres (PHCs) for a check-up…the decision to provide ‘full lunch’ was taken because it took [...]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Y6UeLqoD0] Change-Agent: Harsh Hande; Company: Selco  From Deutsche Welle (Germany’s international broadcaster):     57 percent of the population in India has no electric light, and many would be unable to afford regular electricity even if it were available. But Harish Hande is working to improve the situation. He set up a company called Selco in Bangalore, which [...]

Atanu Dey discusses a NY Times article on the discouraging state of illiteracy in India. According to the article, over 300,000,000 people are illiterate in India and there does not appear to be an coordinated effort to address it. There can be no question that … education in India has largely failed because … education [...]

Vinay just posted an interesting video made, produced by Discovery Channel on grassroots innovators in India. The organization behind identifying and nurturing such innovators is Sristi: SRISTI is a non-governmental organisation setup to strengthen the creativity of grassroots inventors, innovators and ecopreneurs engaged in conserving biodiversity and developing eco-friendly solutions to local problems Sristi was [...]