P. Sainath's talk to AID volunteers, May 2001
Submitted by ameetdesh on Sep 02, 2007 | Tags:
Read the complete story at:
http://www.indiatogether.org/opinions/talks/psainath.htm As a freelance journalist, P. Sainath has spent the last 9 years in rural ares, covering a number of topics related to development - caste, poverty, agriculture, etc. He spends between 200 and 250 days of each year in the villages he chronicles. Royalties from the sale of his book Everybody Loves a Good Drought are used entirely to promote rural journalism, so that people in the villages can tell their own unfiltered stories. The following notes are excerpted from his talk at the Association for India's Development (AID)'s annual meeting in College Park, Maryland in late May 2001. Excerpts from the Q & A session following the talk are also included. :Thanks to Aaditeshwar for suggesting this on orkut group, 'social entrepreneurship'.
P. Sainath is the winner of the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts.
Was wondering about two comments in the discussion after the talk:
1. Grameen Bank, for all its touted success, worked on a fairly small scale compared to the needs of Bangladesh. The Grameen Bank and all its lending affiliates accounted for less than 0.6% of the credit in Bangladesh.
This number seemed surprisingly low .. is it 0.6% of credit or microcredit? Former might not be so bad. Given that this is an excerpt from a talk in 2001, have things changed much in the last 5-6 yrs?
Second was a remark: "The urban poor may be more visible to us, but their numbers are much lower than that of the rural poor". Wonder how the numbers compare in India and outside. Reminds of the discussion in the book 'Planet of the Slums' and its predicted explosion in the urban poor population
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