"With the private sector booming, industry and services have overtaken farming to account for 54 percent of rural income."

This amazing factoid comes from an article that Rob Katz just posted from the International Herald Tribune: Poor rural India? It's a richer place by Anand Giridharadas.

I find it one of the most compelling items I've run across recently. Since the end of WW2, and the dawn of modern thought on economic development, the holy grail of development has been how to foster wealth creation in rural areas. While nobody might put India forward as the ideal model to emulate, it's clear that (as the article goes on immediately to suggest) that current Indian policies are helping to turn the corner. A welcome glimmer of hope.

Al Hammond recently finished posting his series on ‘Technology Innovations at the Edge.’ The full series is now available as a downloadable PDF file here.

One of the premises of the report is that technologies created for developed countries may actually be more useful and financially successful in developing countries. In fact, a recent informal survey of patents granted to Cornell University revealed that 50% of them had potential BOP applications.

I came across a couple of interesting articles today that illustrates the point nicely. The first piece discussed the increasingly well-known wireless broadband technology WiMax. Sometimes referred to as "Wi-Fi on steroids”, it can provide high speed connectivity at a distance of up to 30 miles or more. More than 400 companies are backing the technology, including Intel which expects to begin selling WiMax-enabled processors within 2 years. Although there is some debate over how quickly the standard can be commercialized, demand from Asia and Africa might push up the timetable: