Friday, July 22, 2016
Empowering women through JAM
State Bank of India data suggests that states that have traditionally lagged behind in terms of economic growth are seeing more traction in women entrepreneurship through the Mudra route.
If you thought there is no prize for guessing what JAM (Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and mobile in policy parlance) stands for, then you are mistaken. Using a large random sample of Jan Dhan and Mudra accounts opened by the State Bank of India (SBI) between August 2014 and March 2016, we found an enabling traction across Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mudra loans — this is our terminology for JAM. The logical corollary is a discernible evidence of women empowerment through JAM by allowing them to have better access to credit. We also found that in states with high women literacy, there were more inward remittances, irrespective of gender, and concomitant cash withdrawals.
First, let us take up the issue of women empowerment through JAM. The United Nations defines women empowerment as the process by which women take control and ownership of their lives through the expansion of their choices. In general, women empowerment indicates an increase in economic, social, spiritual and political strength, boosting their self-esteem, enlarging their decision-making power and allowing them better access to resources. All this leads to a positive attitude.
One proxy for women empowerment is the status of rural women in India. Rural women play a significant role in society, and national development is not possible without nurturing this segment. In the Indian context, studies related to credit accessibility of women show that relative access to institutional credit of rural women may be limited vis-a-vis their urban counterparts. In our study, we found that there is indeed traction, though limited, across Jan Dhan and Mudra accounts — primarily in the shishu category of loans, that is loans less than Rs 50,000. Interestingly, if we apply the same percentage of the SBI overlap ratio — that is people having both a Jan Dhan account and a Mudra loan — to the aggregate Jan Dhan accounts opened till date, then we have close to 100 lakh Mudra account holders with a Jan Dhan account.
The good thing is that 23 per cent of Mudra loan account holders with the SBI are women with an average ticket size of around Rs 55,000. Alternatively, this implies that most of the women account holders have taken loans under the shishu category only. In contrast, 65 per cent of the Mudra loan account holders are men with an average exposure of around Rs 87,000, of which there is a good chunk from the economically backward classes. But the most remarkable finding was that the distribution of the women entrepreneurs across India with 36 per cent of the accounts coming from southern India (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Telangana) and 16 per cent from eastern India (West Bengal, Odisha and Assam). Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh accounted for another 17 per cent.
Thus, it clearly seems that states that were laggards in terms of economic growth in the past are seeing more traction in women entrepreneurship through the Mudra route.
Thus, it clearly seems that states that were laggards in terms of economic growth in the past are seeing more traction in women entrepreneurship through the Mudra route.
In terms of the average exposure amount for women entrepreneurs across states, results were even more interesting. On an average, in most of the states as mentioned above, activities were related to grocery and kirana stores, retail shops and even public utility services. But in some of the smaller states like Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Nagaland, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and even eastern states like Bihar and Jharkhand, the average exposure was significantly higher than the national average. It is possible that though limited in number, loans may have been availed by women in such states for activities like buying trucks, cars for passenger and freight transport, given the inhospitable terrains which necessitates the need for an efficient transport infrastructure.
In this context of empowering women, an analogy may be drawn directly to the self-help group or SHG-bank linkage programme — often considered as the ultimate benchmark in women’s empowerment and socio-economic development. Loans like the ones under the Mudra scheme are analogous to microfinance and remain a powerful tool for development as it brings down the capital and the operating costs and helps women entrepreneurship blossom from mere superficiality to productivity.
Coming back to our second major finding: Nearly 35 per cent of the total inward remittances in the SBI sample are also from states with high women literacy rates, of which 25 per cent are below the age group of 45 years. Similarly, 48 per cent of the cash withdrawal — with a larger probability of women withdrawing cash from their accounts compared to their male counterparts — also comes from such states. This clearly indicates that the inward remittances sent by their male counterparts are possibly being put to more productive use by women facilitating independent decision making.
To sum up, research has confirmed that investing in women’s capabilities results in the well-being of the family, especially children. The experience of the successful SHG-bank linkage is a case in point in the Indian context. There is no harm in emulating this in the context of better Mudra loan targeting by using the Jan Dhan account interface.
As our results show, even as women entrepreneurs, specifically the rural ones, are somehow using the Mudra route, we must encourage them even more. This can be achieved by better targeting using big data analytics. For example, states with high literacy across women may be specifically targeted for more of Mudra loans. Simultaneously, the government must think seriously about creating a database of women entrepreneurs across states pursuing similar activities. This will create a successful Mudra-bank linkage. After all, as the SHG example shows, women save more, repay on time and promptly attend the SHG meetings. This is all we need for making women a visible part of Indian growth story.
The writers are the chief economic advisor and the head of analytics, respectively, with the State Bank of India. Views are personal
Source: Indianexpress, 21-07-2016
K.C. Mahindra Education Trust announces 60th Anniversary Scholarships for Post Graduate Studies Abroad
The K.C. Mahindra Education Trust (KCMET) has announced the results of the 2016 K. C. Mahindra Scholarships for Post Graduate Studies Abroad. Being the 60th year, this is a milestone for KCMET which has transformed the lives of over 170,000 students through its various initiatives. At inception, the very first scholarship was for Post Graduate Studies Abroad, which allowed students to pursue their dreams for a higher education overseas.
This year, KCMET received 750 applications from students who have obtained admissions to top universities in the US, Canada, UK, France and Singapore. The candidates went through a rigorous selection process that culminated in 76 shortlisted candidates being interviewed by a panel of eminent leaders comprising of Keshub Mahindra, Chairman Emeritus, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group, Bharat Doshi, Chairman, Mahindra Intertrade Ltd., and Ulhas Yargop, Group President (IT Sector), Group CTO, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.
In addition the other jury members included Dr. Indu Shahani, Principal, H R College & Ex-Sheriff of Mumbai, Vikram Singh Mehta, Executive Chairman of Brookings India in New Delhi & an Independent Director of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd & many other companies like Colgate Palmolive, L&T & Vodafone India, Ireena Vittal, Advisor, (Business Building) & Expert (Indian Agriculture & Urban Change), Independent Director - Titan Industries Ltd and several blue chip companies, Ranjan Pant, a global strategy management consultant & founder of a Boutique Private Equity Advisory & Strategy Consulting firm that advises Chief Executive Officers from several of the twenty largest companies in India.
The top three candidates have been conferred the K.C. Mahindra Fellowship and will receive an interest free loan scholarship of Rs. 8 lakhs each. They have displayed exceptional academic ability with very promising future prospects. Fellows, Ayush Singhania plans to study Structural Engineering & Geomechanics in Stanford University, Trushna Khivsara is pursuing her MBA in The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Aashiq Muhamad has secured admission in Stanford University to study Mechanical Engineering.
In addition to the 3 Fellows, 50 candidates will receive an interest free loan scholarship of Rs.4 lakhs each. The applicants will be pursuing their post-graduation in a number of subjects ranging from Computer Science, to Engineering, MBA, Law and Economics, in various reputed universities that include Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and Yale in the USA, the University of Cambridge, and London School of Business in the UK and INSEAD in Singapore.
When asked, about the two days of intense interviews, Keshub Mahindra, Chairman – K. C. Mahindra Education Trust & Chairman Emeritus – Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., says “You get a chance once a year to meet a group of young people, to see what kind of lives they have lived, to reach this level of hope, desire and dreams, and this energizes us.”
At the end of interviewing candidates over two days, Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group, said, “I am very impressed with the quality of candidates I met this year. We believe in providing opportunities to young Indians to build their own capabilities through higher education overseas, and eventually contribute to building our nation.”
For further details on the K.C. Mahindra Scholarships please visit:
http://www.kcmet.org/what-we-do-Scholarship-Grants.aspx
Source: Indiaeducationdiary, 21-07-2016
How a billion can help a fraction
Compassion has to be combined with the dogged pursuit of justice to treat issues related to mental health
Nearly six months ago in Mumbai, Radha died homeless. She never did think of herself as homeless though. “My family will be happy to see me,” she once said with pride, and added that she was from Borivali. “I’d like some hot tea and then I’ll doze off for a bit,” she continued in perfectly intonated English. But when asked for directions to her house, or details about her family, Radha wasn’t as lucid. She vaguely referred to a life in Dubai with obscure details. Her memories of the times with her parents, however, were filled with joy and longing. Her unrealistic and yet determined hopefulness of being reunited with her family, juxtaposed with flashes of doubt, symbolised the fragility of the human condition. Radha’s mind was sharp even as her body seemed ready to give up. She had clearly endured a lot of suffering: maggots crawled out of her ears, broken arm, and shrivelled body; yet she displayed indomitable optimism and grit. In what can only be described as a dismal state of affairs, the doctors in the hospital that she was taken to refused to touch or treat her until her body was “sanitised” even as the police responded swiftly to our distress call.
As John Rawls said, justice is best served when the most vulnerable in society are benefited, and when life trajectories are not shaped on the basis of a person’s place of birth, endowments, and related privileges or lack thereof. Radha was not supported by this sensibility of justice. Instead, she lay on the fringes of society, ignored, as her basic constitutional rights were violated and a life of dignity denied.
All it takes to be a Radha is a plausible twist in fate, or some unsurmountable distress, poor access to healthcare, social disadvantage, abject poverty, collapse in relationships and networks, a serious and untreated mental illness. All these can spiral a rapid descent into homelessness when family, friends, bystanders and even the state let go.
I am reminded of Rudyard Kipling who said: “For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” Indeed, if we do not build a cohesive, interdependent society, our development will be skewed, insular and selfish with disastrous consequences. Good education alone is not enough; compassion as a value must be imbibed early in life, and the youth must be taught to pursue justice doggedly.
Multiple vulnerabilities
Unfortunately, the Mental Health Care Bill and the National Mental Health Policy, both developed over two years ago, languish in Parliament and in a state of inertia. Both documents address issues around multiple vulnerabilities, and emphasise the mandatory rights of the homeless and poor to access mental health and social care, including disability benefits.
According to the 2011 Census, 1.78 million homeless people sleep rough, exposed frequently to scarcity and harm; typically a quarter of them are known to be affected with mental health issues. These statistics may be gross under-representations, but what cannot be contested is that such people suffer many losses: of identity, citizenship and personhood challenged, and access to health and socio-material networks compromised. Similar losses are sometimes endured by those who reside in State-run mental hospitals and who experience long-term mental health needs. Socially excluded and sometimes abandoned by their families, many of them have made a home of the hospital. Others who resist this life have been presented with limited options or access to supportive housing or independent living. Persons living with persistent mental health or neurodevelopmental issues and dependent on their caregivers again run the risk of experiencing similar losses, in the event of the sudden death of their parent, partner or friend. Unfortunately, losses suffered are not just ontological: the loss of kinship and a sense of affiliation are equally grievous. Thus models developed to address these problems should be cognisant of the nuances and diversity of such composite needs.
Regrettably, our response today is to disregard the existence of such problems or formulate quick-fix and linear solutions. While hospitals, rehabilitation homes and shelters may serve as desired destinations in some cases, others require robust and individualised responses. All this calls for strong political and societal will, and significant allocation of financial resources on the part of the state, and corporate social philanthropy budgets.
It did not seem like Radha had given up on life. She longed for human connection. Society, however, chose to give up on her — consciously. All of us have the ability and power to address these inequities in small measure. The process is undoubtedly complex and the balance between when, how, and how much is often delicate and personal, depending on individual resources, emotional strength, and propensity. The idea is not to judge this state of inaction or disengagement but to implore thought. We are a billion. And the acutely vulnerable, a fraction.
Vandana Gopikumar is co-founder, The Banyan and BALM, and Professor, School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
It’s 25 years since a quiet economic revolution called Manmohanomics began
“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the Opposition parties in Parliament”: Manmohan Singh in January 2014 announcing his decision not to seek re-election as prime minister.
It is now just over two years since Singh demitted office, but such has been the high profile nature of Narendra Modi’s prime ministership that the gent in the blue turban seems like an archival image from another era. And yet, this is perhaps as good a time as any to assess the contribution of Singh: This weekend, after all, marks 25 years since he delivered his landmark 1991 Budget speech opening up the Indian economy. There are unlikely to be any well-choreographed events to mark the occasion or attempts at self-praise. Singh in semi-retirement is a bit like the man was when he was the occupant of 7 Race Course Road : Low profile, self-effacing, and yes, mostly silent.
If we were to locate Singh in the context of contemporary politics, he will be perhaps referred to dismissively as a weak prime minister, someone who owed his position to the munificence of Sonia Gandhi. The shadow of presiding over big-ticket corruption in particular means that Singh is judged almost like a Dhritarashtra -like figure who simply didn’t do enough to rein in his avaricious Cabinet colleagues.
But if we were to rewind the clock back to the early 1990s, we might get a better sense of the man. The period between 1990 and 1992 is arguably the most turbulent in post-Independent India, second only to the dark Emergency years. VP Singh had uncorked the Mandal reservations genie that threatened to split the polity on sharp caste lines. The BJP had re-ignited the Ram Mandir agitation, a dangerous move that would result in the demolition of the Babri masjid and communal riots in several parts of the country. A prime minister had been assassinated, the Kashmir valley was burning and Punjab continued to simmer. And the economic crisis was so serious that the government was close to a default, foreign exchange reserves were down to just three weeks of imports and the government was airlifting its gold reserves to get temporary relief.
In this volatile environment, Singh was asked to shepherd the economy as Union finance minister. We could argue, as Singh himself has in a recent interview, that it requires a crisis for our policy-makers to act decisively. But act he did under the guidance of then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. While credit must be given to Rao for managing the political fallout of economic liberalisation, we cannot minimise the role that Singh and his core team played at the time.
Ironically, Modi, perhaps more than any other contemporary politician, has been a direct beneficiary of the forces unleashed by Singh in 1991. Without the benefit of “Manmohanomics”, there would be no “Modinomics”: The millions who have been lifted out of poverty in Gujarat and beyond in the last two decades and catapulted into the middle class are the result of the opening up of the economy in the Manmohan years as finance minister. At a time when the BJP was still stifled in its economic agenda by its Swadeshi warriors, it was Singh who was taking the tough decisions. Catchy slogans like “Make in India” and “Start up India” resonate today because Singh moved the political discourse away from anti-business rhetoric. He created the environment for a changing India which Modi was astute enough to seize and drive forward.
Sadly, the controversies that dogged the second term of Singh as prime minister were also perhaps the result of the less appetising side of reforms. Opening up of the economy created opportunities for large-scale profiteering through cronyism and corrupt deal-making. That Singh couldn’t control it only reveals his limitations as an accidental politician. Maybe, if Singh had retired or resigned in 2009 when it was clear that he would have to compromise with corruption to survive, he might be judged less harshly. Even so, as a man of quiet dignity who transformed India at one of its most difficult periods, Singh deserves our respect and appreciation.
Post-script: I met Singh last week to ask if he would agree to a TV interview on the momentous events of 1991. “Why do you want me to talk about myself? In any case, I don’t make good TV,” he sighed with typical diffidence. I guess not everyone wants to be on TV to make a mark.
Source: Hindustan Times, 22-07-2016
Ending Wars Peacefully
PRANAV KHULLAR
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The preamble to the UN charter sums up our existential dilemma of today in an intensely evocative way , stating that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that defences of peace must be constructed.“In a land where history had sought to be sketched in an arc from Gautama to Gandhi, it is but appropriate to reflect on such defences and revive them in a time when war and terrorism have cast their shadow today . It is in the rock-edicts of Asoka that one finds the earliest instance of the transformation of a king who not only abjured war, but who went on to ban war in his kingdom as a measure of state policy . His inquiry into the psychological roots of war led him to believe that hatred for the other's beliefs is the primary cause of war but that hatred can never be appeased by hatred; it “can be appeased only by love, which is the eternal law.“ This inner understanding transformed Asoka into the great apostleking of peace and spiritual values, remembered not because he fought and won wars, but because he had the courage to perform the more difficult task of winning the hearts of people.
Urdu writer Krishan Chander narrates a story of two soldiers journeying back home after World War II. One soldier hopes that someday all soldiers will lay down their arms and refuse to fight, to which the other responds, in that case the enemy would win. The story captures our innermost insecurities and conditioning which would require an enemy even when none might exist.
Urdu writer Krishan Chander narrates a story of two soldiers journeying back home after World War II. One soldier hopes that someday all soldiers will lay down their arms and refuse to fight, to which the other responds, in that case the enemy would win. The story captures our innermost insecurities and conditioning which would require an enemy even when none might exist.
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