Microfinance was once celebrated as one of the most promising innovations in development finance: small, collateral-free credit to the poorest, leveraging social capital instead of physical assets. Originating in the successes of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, microfinance was embraced in India through the SHG-bank linkage and later via private-sector MFIs. Over time, however, many microfinance programmes in India have faltered: high delinquency, over-indebtedness, lack of livelihood integration, and borrower distress have tarnished its reputation. This paper traces the genealogy of microfinance, contextualises its Indian adaptation, examines state-wise performance, analyses delinquency and PAR (Portfolio at Risk) data, and recounts cases of borrower distress and suicides. It diagnoses structural and regulatory failures and proposes a ten-point action plan to reframe microfinance as a tool of inclusive, sustainable development—particularly relevant for India’s ~1.46 billion population (2025 estimate). Policy prescriptions emphasise accountability, mutual guarantee, market linkages, data transparency, and borrower empowerment.
When the Waters Will Not Recede – Kerala’s Flash Floods, the Quarrying Economy and the Plastic Tide: A Policy Agenda for Climate-Resilient Development
Kerala’s August 2026 red-alert deluge, which submerged homes and commercial streets in Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Idukki, Kasaragod and Kozhikode within hours, is the latest instalment of a pattern that has recurred with grim regularity since the catastrophic floods of 2018. This paper argues that while a warming Arabian Sea and El Niño-linked monsoon variability have undoubtedly intensified single-day rainfall events across the Western Ghats, the scale of destruction owes at least as much to decades of unregulated quarrying, unplanned housing and road construction on wetlands and floodplains, and the collapse of natural drainage systems choked by plastic waste. It further documents the growing volume of non-biodegradable plastic surging into Kerala’s backwaters with every flood, and the attendant public health threat of microplastic ingestion through the fish and food chain. The paper closes with a ten-point action agenda for the Government of Kerala and comparable developing regions, and sets out specific roles for United Nations agencies, the Asian Development Bank, the African Development Bank, the Islamic Development Bank, the newly constituted Board of Peace, and civil society, in building long-term climate and disaster resilience.
HOTBED AND GRAVEYARD –
melmana@gmail.com | +91 9947670887
Ask an international investor to name a hotbed of opportunity in Asia and China still comes first, even after two years of visible slowdown. Ask the same investor to name a graveyard, and India, rightly or wrongly, is rarely far from the tongue. The question is deliberately provocative, but it is not idle. It goes to the heart of what makes capital move, what makes it stay, and what makes it flee — and it deserves an answer built on evidence rather than sentiment. This paper sets out that evidence, situates it within the wider architecture of global investment flows, and closes with ten propositions: five for the international community to weigh, and five for India’s own policymakers to act on, so that the country is not left explaining its absence from a race it is fully capable of running.
Bridging the AI Technology Gap Before It Becomes a Chasm
The world is living through a paradox. Never before have we witnessed such extraordinary leaps in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI). Yet never before has the risk of exclusion been so stark. While AI transforms health, education, commerce and governance in advanced economies, large parts of the globe remain on the margins — struggling with basic digital infrastructure, skills shortages, and limited say in shaping the rules of the game.
This is not just a “digital divide” anymore. It is an AI divide, growing faster than many policymakers realize. Left unchecked, it will deepen inequality between nations and within societies. The United Nations’ recent Governing AI for Humanity report makes it clear: without urgent, coordinated action, the very technology that could help us solve global challenges may instead amplify them.
From Rome to the Field: Ground-Level Interventions for Agricultural Heritage, Food Security and Farmer Dignity
As FAO celebrates its 80th anniversary and honours a new cohort of 28 heritage agricultural systems across 14 countries—bringing the total globally recognised agricultural heritage sites to 102 in 29 countries — there is both a moment of celebration and a moment of responsibility. These heritage systems remind us that small-scale farmers, drawing on centuries of labour, knowledge and place-based adaptation, are at the heart of food security, biodiversity, rural resilience and cultural identity.
The Silent Poison on Our Plates: Why Microplastics Demand a Global Reckoning
There is a peculiar cruelty in the way modern civilisation is poisoning itself: silently, invisibly, through the ordinary act of eating a meal. Microplastics — fragments under five millimetres across, shed from packaging, synthetic clothing, tyres and cosmetics as they weather under sun and wave — have travelled from ocean sediment into rice, salt, fish, drinking water and now, unmistakably, into us. A landmark 2024 University of New Mexico study found microplastic contamination in every one of 62 human placentas it examined, at concentrations ranging up to 790 micrograms per gram of tissue. Blood studies have detected plastic particles in roughly three-quarters of healthy adults tested. Earlier this month, researchers reported microplastics in nearly every human brain sample they analysed, including from people who had shown no sign of illness. What began three decades ago as an eyesore on beaches has become a public-health question that most governments still have not found the nerve to ask.
The Role of Millets in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security: Agronomic, Nutritional and Therapeutic Perspectives for Global Wellness
Millets — a botanically diverse group of small-seeded, drought-hardy grasses that include sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, barnyard millet and kodo millet — are re-emerging as strategic crops for sustainable agriculture, environmental resilience and public health. This paper draws together the agronomic, nutritional and clinical evidence on millets, with particular attention to their therapeutic relevance for lifestyle diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, obesity and coeliac disease. The evidence shows that millets combine a low glycaemic index, high dietary fibre, favourable lipid-modulating and anti-inflammatory phytochemistry, and an exceptional tolerance of drought and heat that requires far less water than rice or wheat. Together these properties make millets a practical, low-cost intervention for both climate adaptation and non-communicable disease prevention, particularly across the arid and semi-arid tropics of Asia and Africa. The paper closes with ten policy recommendations addressed to national governments, public-health authorities and the international wellness community, aimed at mainstreaming millets within food-security and preventive-health strategy.
