UCB Economic Development Blog

Haath Mein Sehat: Hygiene Education, Safe Drinking Water, and Sanitation in Mumbai and Hubli, India.

Haath Mein Sehat (”Health in Hands”) is project of the Blum Center for Developing Economies and Engineers for Sustainable World, run jointly by UC Berkeley students in students in Mumbai and Hubli, India.

INTERNSHIPS AVAILABLE:

- Summer 2009 in India (some positions also have Winter 2009 travel)

- On-Campus Year-Round

Application Due: Friday October 10th, 2009

The Haath Mein Sehat (HMS) project began in 2004 as a collaborative effort between students from UC Berkeley, community groups, and colleges in India. The goal of HMS is to prevent diarrheal illnesses and improve the safety of drinking water and sanitation through hygiene education, point-of-use water treatment, and sanitation. Berkeley students partner with college students, working with over one hundred college students in each city and several slum communities.

For more information about HMS, please visit: www.hmsindia.org or come to our info session on Thursday, October 2nd at 7:30pm in 502 Davis.

————

Haath Mein Sehat is recruiting both undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines to join the project team for the 2008-2009 year.

There are three different opportunities available:

. Volunteer in India for Winter and Summer 2009.

. Volunteer in India for Summer 2009.

. Volunteer with the project on campus during the school year.

Available Positions:

India (Mumbai or Hubli):

. Education

. Evaluation

. Experimentation

Berkeley-based:

. Fundraising Team Member

. Education Team Member

. Communications Team Member

Detailed descriptions & application available on the website:

http://www.hmsindia.org

October 1st, 2008 | Category: General Development | Leave a comment

Living in an OECD country as we are now doing, we are fortunate to escape the everyday realities of the world’s poor majority. To remind yourself of this may sharpen your sense of the importance of understanding the determinants of poverty as we are studying them in the course.

There are many videos on YouTube illustrating various aspects of poverty – here are a few. These may be unpleasant to watch, but they provide context of the abstractions and theory we discuss in lecture, and even motivation to improve our understanding of this fundamental human dilemma.

The African Dream: Ending Extreme Poverty

Poverty in India

Good: The United Nations Millenium Declaration

September 18th, 2008 | Category: General Development, Inequality and Inequity, Poverty and Vulnerability | Leave a comment

In recognition of the importance of poverty alleviation for world peace, the Nobel Committee awarded it’s annual Nobel Memorial Peace Prize to a Bangladeshi banker, Muhammad Yunus (shown here with his daughter), founder of the Grameen Bank and pioneer in microcredit:

Peace Prize for the Poor

September 11th, 2008 | Category: Development Aid and Aid Agencies, Inequality and Inequity, Microfinance, Poverty and Vulnerability, Rural Institutions | Leave a comment

Time to reassess the BRIC miracle?

Certainly commodities are cooling, demand from high income countries is anemic, and asset prices are really, really high in some of these countries. Look out below??

FT – Check, please!

September 11th, 2008 | Category: Economic Growth, Exchange Rate and Capital Markets, General Development, Institutions and Development, Large Emerging Economies, Political Economy and Governance, Trade and Globalization | Leave a comment

Recent trends in Russia’s territorial interests are having an adverse effect on the capital markets of this emerging economy. It appears that the rising portfolio value of Russia’s energy assets, plus some desire to influence national political sentiment, has motivated the leadership to pursue policies that are threatening the investment climate by reducing credit available from foreign partnership and banking institutions. Here we see that politics has a price.

FT – Price of Putin

which is still rising…

Russian Capital Flight

September 11th, 2008 | Category: Economic Growth, Exchange Rate and Capital Markets, Institutions and Development, Land and Property Rights, Microfinance, Political Economy and Governance, Trade and Globalization | Leave a comment

The most nuclear collective is the family, followed by the village. Understanding informal economic arrangements requires accurate perception of individual and collective interest, so that we may better interpret behavioural responses to material needs and incentives. One of the most insightful pieces written collective identity was by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Despite being about a rather unpleasant topic (cock fighting) it offers many insights into the nature of identity in social systems.

Geertz Cockfights

September 10th, 2008 | Category: General Development | Leave a comment

One of the most comprehensive studies of global climate change is that of the Stern Review, which finds that irreversible change is already under way, the cost of inaction is substantial, and impacts will be very unequal around the globe, with particular adversity for developing countries. A general overview of their findings is in this document

Stern Committee Executive Summary

while the overall Stern project is discussed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stern_Review

Since this time, there have been more detailed and exhaustive studies, focused mainly on countries that can pay for this research. One recent piece with global perspective is

OECD Coastal Damage

September 10th, 2008 | Category: Impact Assessment, Sustainbility and Environment | Leave a comment

Viet Nam has been one of the most dynamic emerging economies of this decade, but it is unclear that domestic institutional reforms have proceeded far enough to maintain this economy’s momentum. Rapid growth of external trade, fueling heavy rural-urban migration, has overheated this economy.

NYT – Viet Nam Implosion

September 10th, 2008 | Category: Economic Growth, General Development, Institutions and Development, Large Emerging Economies, Trade and Globalization | Leave a comment

Using a massive collection of detailed household surveys, poverty experts Martin Ravallion and Shaohua Chen have updated estimates of poverty around to globe. The story that emerges is complex and compelling, revealing that, apart from China and a few other dramatic success stories, poverty alleviation remains an essential challenge for those governing the majority of the world’s population.

The World is Poorer than We Thought

NYT – More Poor

NYT -Measuring Poverty

September 10th, 2008 | Category: Development Aid and Aid Agencies, General Development, Impact Assessment, Inequality and Inequity, Poverty and Vulnerability | Leave a comment