Sparsh

1- Barefoot - The other side of life Harsh Mander -: Can anyone really live on Rs. 26 a day, the income of the officially poor in rural India? Two youngsters try it out. 2- Powerhouse on your plate! - Easily accessible and affordable, millets are making a comeback to Indian kitchens, says Shonali Muthalaly. 3- The everyday embrace of inequality :The institution of paid domestic labour produces cleanliness, meals and childcare, but it also produces and reproduces an unequal home and society. 4- Salman Rushdie & India's new theocracy :-India's secular state is in a state of slow-motion collapse. The contours of a new theocratic dystopia are already evident. 5- BCCI: Billionaires Control Cricket in India by P. SAINATH 6- 42 per cent of Indian children are underweight - Hunger and Malnutrition (HUNGaMA) report by the Naandi Foundation – were described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “national shame” at a release function here on Tuesday. 7- The complex co...

1- Accessing Institutional Finance: A Demand Side Story for Rural India Under the Reserve Bank of India’s “financial inclusion” campaign, the provision of institutional finance has been progressing at differential rates across the country. However, when we pair administrative banking data on availability of bank branches in a state with the All India Debt and Investment Survey (2002-03) capturing both institutional and non-institutional borrowing by households, we find that states with the most access to institutional finance, or supply, are not necessarily the ones with the most demand for finance. Looking at household level data within each state we identify determinants of institutional borrowing, and some of the strongest predictors for accessing institutional finance. A number of empirical regularities emerge in terms of the importance of having assets like land for borrowing, which undermines the basic philosophy of financial inclusion. 2- Crop Insurance in India : Scope...

Later Addition (Jan 2020): Diary of Rural Manager !  on the jobs, career prospects, and life of a rural management graduate. I was an aspirant for the rural management program last year. I applied for both XIMB and IRMA. I tried to write down a possible list of the question that may be asked by the interview panelists. Please customize the questions as per your needs. 01- Describe yourself in 3 words? 02- Tell us about yourself and your family background. 03- What is success according to you? 04- What is an Urban area? 05- Why do you think you are suited for RM? 06- Why you pursued Engineering at graduation? 07- Why do you switch to the IT industry after a degree in mechanical engineering? 08- What is Development? What is development according to you? 09- Why IRMA/XIMB/TISS? 10- Would you like to ask any questions from us? Would you like to ask any questions from us? 11- Why Rural and What is Rural? Why did you think about rural? 12- Why prepare for rural managemen...

1- Food Politics : How the present National Food Security Bill will deepen Food Insecurity by Dr Vandana Shiva. 2- How To Learn the Language of Evil - Alan Wolfe's Political Evil offers lessons liberals especially need. A review By Michael Ignatieff. 3- Five Things You Should Stop Doing in 2012 by Dorie Clark who is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. [HBR] 4- Why I Hire People Who Fail by Jeff Stibel who is Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. [HBR] 5- On Public Funding of Colleges and Towards a General Theory of Public Options : If we want to wonder why public education is becoming expensive it is in part because we aren’t supporting it as much as we were in the past. 6- Why Software Is Eating The World : Instead of constantly questioning their valuations, let's seek to understand how the new generation of technology companies are doing what they do, what ...

1- Who Represents the Poor? by Pranab Bardhan - The Limits of the NGO Movement in Global Development 2- Why the Fight against Poverty Is Failing: A Contrarian View - Abraham George is the founder of The George Foundation, an NGO engaged in humanitarian work in India, and the author of India Untouched: The Forgotten Face of Rural Poverty. In this contrarian essay, he explores why the current strategies that governments and development agencies are employing to reduce poverty are not working the way they should. Among his arguments: Microcredit programs, as they are now practiced in India, do little to help the poor. 3- The great land grab : India's war on farmers - Land is a valuable asset that should be used to better humanity through farming and ecology. An article by Vandana Shiva. 4- Right to Food Campaign's opposition to replacement of PDS with cash transfers : A Google group for interaction and discussion. 5- In Free India I Was Denied Entry ' : - Interview...

Year started with interview at IRMA. Failure in IRMA was hard to swallow. As they say, it rains hardest on those who deserve the sun. I learnt in hard way that never make a tall claim. Tall claim have a nasty way of coming back like boomerang to haunt you. On Leaving CSC : Talent leaves deadwood does not. It is hard to work somewhere without proper training and background. Without context and passion, the life becomes incomprehensible. Though there are artificial problems, I want to address human problems. I was luckily selected in XIMB. I am in the phase of rebuilding mine career now. I hope to be riding the crest of the wave that hard work has created. The most terrible poverty is the feeling of being unloved. I found someone special. The truth of the heart can only be seen in the eyes of one who is in love. There is someone in my life. I am seeking the relationship with love and trust despite differences of age, thoughts, hobby and attitude. I am plan to be surprised by the ...

Reading creates capacity for deep, linear concentration. That is one unintended positive outcome of the habit of reading. Books always touch man’s head and heart with a burning/soothing/boring sensation. I read books on cinema, consumer behavior, leadership and culture having various overtones this year. They helped me to fight desperation, myopia and close-mindedness prevailing inside me; I have always tried to pay attention to theories that conflict with common perception, only if those theories are more driven by human behavior than common stereotype assumptions. Books of great authors are the best tools to understand these theories. "Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs." Quite an apt statement to start about reading tour of this year. I am enlisting the names of books read by me in 2011 with their background and my feedback. Ratings are highly personal. My Name is Red  by Orhan Pamuk - English - 8/10 A murder...

Continuing from the 1st part of the Development series in RM , I will move towards the 2nd part of the learning in the field of Rural Management. Looking into mine MBA and engineering curriculum, I can easily conclude that it is heavily influenced by American model and lacks novelty. Despite of mine low academic orientation, I have not seen really good books from an Indian author. Most of the books are from western universities. Hence, there is dire need to dejargonise and accept superfluos nature of our education. During this trimester of PGDM-RM (rural management) at XIMB, I asked this question again and again :- why one chooses any course or college ? Whether one prefers a brand or academic learning or mere placement records of the college for routing the career path. Any college should have these aspects for growth : Creation of knowledge through research, Application of knowledge within the industry through commercializaion and Dissemination of knowledge through classroom l...

"It is good to be curious because that is how one starts the journey of inquiry... into existence; but if one simply remains curious, then there will be no intensity in it. One can move from one curiosity to another — one will become a driftwood — from one wave to another wave, never getting anchored anywhere. Curiosity is good as a beginning, but then one has to become more passionate. One has to make life a quest, not only a curiosity." --- Osho  I am now searching the root of mine reading habits and how they have changed my behavior over the span of time. Even though I was attracted towards schoolbooks, I don't remember any interest in the reading at KG level. Only memory I have of reading, it is of nursery rhyme ' Johnny Johnny Yes Papa ' in the classroom. I spent most of the time listening to the old songs of Kishore Kumar and Mahendra Kumar in the cassette player. I had started reading Children stories in Hindi newspaper ' Dainik Jagran ' initially...

Harvard professor Larry Lessig is one of our foremost authorities on copyright issues, with a vision for reconciling creative freedom with marketplace competition. 1- The Indian state of Bihar has long been a byword for bad governance. It was however governed particularly badly between 1990 and 2005, and has since experienced something of a ‘governance miracle’. How can we account for the 1990–2005 deterioration? Through this working paper - State Incapacity by Design: Understanding the Bihar Story , we will understand that the low state capacity is often a political choice . 2- La Grande Revolution, Encore? A comparison between France of 1787 with present USA as both had financed an overseas war with borrowed money. 3- The War Dogma : This article appears in the July issue of Agenda/Infochange for the theme on the ‘Limits of Freedom’. An insight on Dantewada and Operation Green Hunt. 4- Playing fast and loose by Pratap Bhanu Mehta : A overview of tussle on Janlokpal Bill ...