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LONDON - "I think that economists have a responsibility to write in such a way to be read by ordinary people and by political leaders," the bearded and bespectacled Oxford professor says, in a quiet and careful tone, from his home in France. "So I wrote a book that's very readable."

That may not sound like a humble claim, but then Paul Collier has very clearly been read by a lot of people lately. His book, The Bottom Billion, argues plainly and often rudely that a dramatic change is needed in the way we deal with the world's poorest nations. It stands out from the pile of angry manifestos written by former aid-agency gurus during the past year for one important reason: It has become part of our language.

In January, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared that 2008 should be "the year of the bottom billion," citing Mr. Collier's ideas, and then invited him to spend a day lecturing to the members of the UN Security Council. In the weeks that followed, he was invited by the cabinets of Britain, Norway, the Netherlands and Japan to deliver seminars in foreign aid.

On Tuesday in Toronto, Mr. Collier will be presented with the $60,000 Lionel Gelber Prize, the top honour in non-fiction book writing. While this prize has often gone to books that are elegantly written (Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Extremes) or meticulously researched (Steve Coll's Ghost Wars), in this case the judges have plainly gone for sheer clout: Wherever you find yourself these days, somebody seems to be citing Paul Collier.

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A lot is expected of the middle class in emerging economies. But they just want a quiet life.

Two jars of chickpeas, 20 bars of soap, three packs of cigarettes and six sachets of shampoo-all these items and more are in stock at a village store five hours away from the Indian city of Hyderabad. It is the leanest of inventories, and yet it supports great hopes. Combined with a scrap-metal business, the store is just enough to lift its owners into the ranks of India's fabled middle class. They and their comrades in Latin America, Africa and emerging Asia belong to a vague demographic that no one can define precisely, but which everyone agrees is vital to stability and prosperity in the developing world. “The virtues of a middle class are those which conduce to getting rich—integrity, economy, and enterprise,” observed John Stuart Mill after the industrial revolution. Do the new middle classes share those virtues? In a recent paper* Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, two economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have tried to find out. As well as visiting village stores outside Hyderabad, they drew on household surveys in 13 developing countries, from Mexico and Panama to Tanzania, South Africa and East Timor. The result is a sequel to their 2006 portrait of the lives of those living on about $1 a day.

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The announcement in January by Tata Motors of its newest car, the Nano, was revealing on many levels. The announcement generated extensive coverage and commentary, but just about everyone missed the Nano's real significance, which goes far beyond the car itself.

But, OK, let's start with the car itself - particularly the price. At about $2,500 retail, the Nano is the most inexpensive car in the world. Its closest competitor, the Maruti 800, made in India by Maruti Udyog, sells for roughly twice as much. To put this in perspective, the price of the entire Nano car is roughly equivalent to the price of a DVD player option in a luxury Western car. The low price point has left other auto companies scrambling to catch up.

Thinking outside the patent box

How could Tata Motors make a car so inexpensively? It started by looking at everything from scratch, applying what some analysts have described as 'Gandhian engineering' principles - deep frugality with a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. A lot of features that Western consumers take for granted - air conditioning, power brakes, radios, etc - are missing from the entry-level model.

More fundamentally, the engineers worked to do more with less. The car is smaller in overall dimensions than the Maruti, but it offers about 20 per cent more seating capacity as a result of design choices such as putting the wheels at the extreme edges of the car.

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D. Murali and G. Padmanaban

Chennai: Much has been talked about ‘fortune at the bottom of the pyramid'. But do we find big corporates discovering the ‘fortune'? Does it make good economics for the companies?

"At the very bottom of the pyramid there are no fortunes to be made because purchasing power is so low," says Mr Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University.

"Further up the pyramid, however, there is huge scope for introducing such things as brands," he adds. "Brands are essentially mechanisms for enabling consumers to know the quality of the goods they purchase because companies with brands are investing in building reputation," elaborates Mr Collier.

So, some of the features of a market economy that superficially look utterly wasteful - such as advertising - actually have the potential to perform an important function for poor people, he argues, in an e-mail interaction with Business Line.

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This year, Pop!Tech will select up to twenty visionary change agents - chosen from around the world and from many different social-innovation fields - to participate in a unique, cutting-edge Fellows program designed to accelerate their impact.

Fellows will participate (all-expenses paid) in the 2008 Pop!Tech conference, the visionary annual gathering of thought leaders and change agents that will convene October 22-25, 2008 in Camden, Maine. Fellows will also take part in a unique, in-depth leadership and skills development program that will cover areas that are critical to success in creating "big bet" social programs, such as strategy, technology, communications, fundraising, media relations, digital storytelling, and how to take initiatives to scale, led by some of the world's most successful social entrepreneurs and renowned specialists. Fellows will also have year-round access to Pop!Tech mentors and a network of support to aid in the advancement of their ideas, projects and collaborations.

Fellows will be selected based on their proven track record, as well as their interest in and high potential for generating significant cutting-edge, multidisciplinary, and socially beneficial innovations in fields such as education, energy, technology, global healthcare, development, environment, human rights advocacy, media, journalism and related fields.

To ensure diversity, both from a cultural and experiential perspective, at least one-third of the class will consist of participants from outside the US and at least one-third will be 35 years of age or younger.

Nomination forms for Fellows are available here. Selection of Fellows will be made on rolling basis throughout 2008.

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Welcome, dear readers, to the court of the law of unintended consequences.

Britain is mulling tougher labeling standards to make it more difficult for imported food to carry an "organic" label. The idea is to make it less appealing to air-freight in fruits and veggies from Africa, with their aircraft emissions, in order to save the developing world from the ravages of global warming somewhere down the road. But one group may come out the loser much sooner: poor farmers in the developing world.

From today's London Times: "So how do we save Africa from a possible future disaster? Apparently, by creating a real disaster in the here and now: making poor Africans even poorer. That sounds like madness - or plain badness - to me."

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The Citi Foundation has announced a three-year, $11.2 million program in partnership with the Small Enterprise Education and Promotion (SEEP) Network in Washington, D.C., to advance the integration of microfinance into the mainstream economies of developing countries.

The Citi Network Strengthening Program will work to expand the capacity of twelve major microfinance networks and their members, enabling them to develop products and services that meet the needs of their clients while enhancing the industry's infrastructure, introducing higher standards of management and governance, and promoting the vital role of microfinance in providing the poor with access to financial services. The program will include a comprehensive assessment of the networks' capacity to meet the needs of their members, an in-depth report on the microfinance industry in participating countries or regions, and strategic, business, and implementation plans.

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A "social stock exchange" where ethical investors can trade shares in worthy enterprises could be set up under plans announced on Friday.

The exchange would aim to combine profitable trading with social or environmental missions. Clean technologies, healthcare, first world development projects and help for disadvantaged communities would be included in the exchange.

The Rockefeller Foundation, one of the world's best-known philanthropic organisations, is putting up $500,000 (£252,000) to pay for the feasibility study. If this identifies demand for a social stock exchange, the market would be launched next year.

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A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid Guatemalan villages by this summer.

After the U.S. engineers finish the design, local workers in the town of Quetzaltenango will manufacture the small-scale turbine. It will produce 10-15 watts of electricity, enough to charge a 12-volt battery that can power simple devices like LED lights."They're replacing kerosene lamps, if anything at all," said Matt McLean, a mechanical engineer by day and leader of the wind-turbine project by night. "The biggest driver is just keeping the cost way down. We're shooting for under $100, which is a challenge, but we're in that range."T

he effort comes amidst recent efforts to bring new light and power to small towns in the developing world. An estimated 1.6 billion people worldwide are without electricity, and many of them are forced to light their homes with kerosene. Using one of these lamps is like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, says the World Bank, and the lamps present a significant fire risk. That's why many startup companies, such as d.Light, are trying to bring cheaper LED lights to homes, but they still need a solution for producing power locally.

That's where organizations like Engineers Without Borders come in. Founded in 2002 by Bernard Amadie, a professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, it has grown to more than 10,000 members in over 250 chapters. According to Cathy Leslie, the executive director of the U.S. organization, 340 projects are underway.

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