Chetan's Musings

Nearly 20% of India's population forms the base of the socio-economic pyramid, earning less than Rs. 100 per day By the time Mr. C.K. Prahalad published his most famous and cited work in August 2004, I had spent two years in Pratham, the largest primary education NGO in India. Till then, I had seen the innards of our metros - particularly Delhi and Mumbai - and had seen enough to know that the reverend management Guru had a point, but was not convinced in entirety. The book spoke of the BoP as the 4 billion poor of the world, living on an annual income of less than $1500 (which translated to just over Rs. 5000 per month then). In the Indian context, this Bottom of the Pyramid had a population of 400 million, around 40% of the country's people. But it was clearly visible, even then, that this BoP has several layers, and the bottom-most of these layers (often called the poorest of the poor) did not qualify for any of Prahalad's theorizations.  Thousands of young me...

"The Poor are the spiritual reserve of the world." I've just spent two illuminating days at an international conference on Migration at Ahmedabad. Titled "Migration Practice - Pushing Borders", the conference had civil society representatives working in the field of migration from China, USA, Germany, and India. It was organized jointly by Transatlantic Forum on Migration & Integration and Aajeevika Bureau . That Migration for the sake of furthering livelihood is a global phenomena is well known; yet getting to know about the issue from an international perspective -- and how different nations are dealing with it -- was enriching, to say the least. Over the two days, I learnt about the challenges the European Union faces in its free-border policy, of how there's talk of Schengen Visa rules being rolled back. I got a glimpse of the massive rural to urban migration happening in China over the last decade and a half, and of the desperation of Centra...