In 2024, global employment expanded in line with a growing labour force, keeping the global unemployment rate steady at 5 per cent, similar to that of 2023. Slowing productivity growth remains a major bottleneck with respect to expanding the opportunities for decent work. On the back of stable unemployment rates, …
On December 15, the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly cleared a bill to regulate microfinance institutions (MFIs) in the state. The bill replaces an ordinance issued in October following 54 suicide deaths allegedly due to coercive methods of loan recovery by MFIs (see ‘Death by Default’, Down To Earth, November 30, …
Microcredit schemes in India have recently caused scandal. The media blame them of causing over-indebted clients to commit suicide. Such reporting is overblown, but Indian microfinance certainly is in a mess.
The report highlights the continued challenge posed by high unemployment rates in many economies and outlines a number of risks and uncertainties for the economic outlook such as a premature withdrawal of policy stimulus, increased exchange rate volatility and a renewed widening of global imbalances. Against this background, several policy …
This paper explores the relationship between migration, remoteness and chronic poverty in India. It addresses one of the key challenges for India, where growing levels of inequality and uneven growth have resulted in large sections of the population being excluded or adversely incorporated. Many of these people belong to remote …
This cover story in Down To Earth online charts the growth trajectory of India’s microfinance institutions and consists of a special report on the microfinance institutions in Andhra Pradesh who grew rich by lending insured loans to the rural poor.
Ega Mounika was born into debt, lived in debt and died with debts. The college-going 20-year-old of Warangal’s Karimabad village immolated herself on September 25; three days later, she died. “My daughter wanted to release us from debt,” said her father Laxmi Narayan who sustained burn injuries trying to rescue …
The total demand for micro-credit in the country has been estimated at Rs 50,000 crore. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimates that in 256 of India’s 626 districts the credit gap is at least 95 per cent or more. Most mfis are concentrated in these districts, including two of …
If you want to rank states, there are two broad roads to follow. First, you can administer questionnaires and respondents' reply to specific questions. This route, however, presumes that respondents know about all the states you wish to rank. Typically, that doesn't happen. Respondents know about states they operate in …
The most delectable hilsa, swore connoisseurs, were to be found in the rivers of Bangladesh. But silting and have changed that. They are moving towards the Ganga now. Read this special report by Down To Earth on hilsa's shifting homebase. Ten years ago Bangladesh’s rivers were deeper and hilsa plentiful. …
Aminul Islam looked to the sky and in an instant brought his eyes to rest on a small mound of hilsa. He picked up a silver-scaled fish, patted its underbelly that had a streak of pink running across it, and let out a cry drowning the scraping of crates, the …
At Chandpur, about 150 km south of Dhaka, Anisur Rahman has a scientific explanation for the predicament of fisher people like Samaad. Currently senior scientific officer at Bangladesh’s Fish Research Institute, Rahman explained, “In scientific parlance, the hilsa is an anadromous fish. It lives most of its lives in the …
It was inevitable that the commercial model of microfinance in India, with its minimalist and standardised model of lending, would grow into a bubble and run into trouble. Many microfinance commercial organisations have entered the market in search of profits and are competing to lend to the poor. In the …
In an ideal market economy competition lowers prices of consumer goods. It is just the opposite in the case of pharmaceutical products. More expensive brands sell more. Take Cyclovir, an ointment for treating skin infection caused by herpes. Its therapy cost (cost of one course) is Rs 812, while a …
Vidarbha is green again, the rains have finally come, and at least at this point of time, seem to have come to stay their entire term, unlike the previous years when the it simply disappeared after giving us a false hopes of a normal monsoon. Here the article takes a …
MAHABUBNAGAR A Shekhar, 25, committed suicide a year ago. A resident of Burgupalle village in Andhra Pradesh’s Mahabub - nagar district, he had bought half a hectare (ha) for growing paddy. He borrowed Rs 1.5 lakh to sink three borewells but did not find groundwater. Shekhar could not repay the …
