It was bound to happen- BusinessWeek caught the microfinance bug today, publishing an extended overview of this booming industry in India.  Rather than simply explaining the microfinance movement and describing how it works, the author gets into some of the structural imbalances spurring market demand for credit in small amounts.

The article contrasts India’s prosperity on a national level “its economy has clocked 8%-plus growth over the past three years” with the unequal distribution of these gains “roughly 30% of India’s 1-billion-plus population lives below the poverty line”

The Financial Times exposes the hype over trade and poverty in the context of all the rhetoric we’ve heard regarding the failure of the Doha round.  The last series of WTO meetings ground to a halt, largely over the ‘developed’ world’s refusal to significantly cut agricultural tariffs and farm subsidies.  

While I am personally against the unwillingness of countries like the US to make real attempts at opening their economy to goods from developing country farmers, I am not particularly surprised.

The Laureates for the 2006 Tech Museum Awards were recently announced. The Tech Museum Awards is an international awards program that honors innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity.

While this awards program is more about recognition than about stimulating further research, it is still important to bring attention to the application of technology to development problems. Not only that, but with Bill Gates headlining the event, it should garner some press for the lesser-known laureates.