One of Project RISHI's goals is to maintain a sense of transparency. We want our followers and donors to know exactly where our money is going--towards specific projects and people of the village. We keep updated meeting minutes on our website from each of the committees. This outlines all of our plans and discussions to give people access to the window of our organization. We understand that transparency is key in gaining trust and reliability for any non-profit organization.

Kiva.org recently ran into some problems with honest transparency. For more information, read this NY Times article. Kiva previously adverised their organization as a connector between individual donors and individual recipients. But in reality, Kiva connects donors to microfinance insitutions. While their program still has a good cause in mind, it makes the world a little weary about how their money is handled.

No initiative should be taken without research. Here's a good article that  talks about providing shoes for the cause of development.

Have we followed through with our research?

We know that some children of the village have shoes, but simply do not wear them. One child says, they aren't fun to wear when you have to run. Another kid claims, they break easily. Thus, we 're planning on investing in stronger Batta shoes.

This also brings up the question of socks. How many socks should we provide for each children? As the article states, children in developed countries have so much trouble staying away from athlete's foot with their millions of pairs of socks. How can we prevent it from being a problem in an Indian village?

Check out this article from the NY Times.

India is willing to spend $900 Million on solar energy. But, how successful do you think this initiative will be? India refuses to set mandates to control carbon emissions because of the country's dependency on coal. Furthermore, solar power will cost about 2.5 times more than coal. With no incentive to change to green, I doubt India will be ready to adopt this policy.

      As Professor Ananya Roy explains, the World Bank represents an “entanglement between development and capitalism”. The World Bank isn’t like a normal bank. It is a global development program in which the wealthier countries of the world pump billions of dollars into the poorer nation’s economies in the hopes of achieving the millennial development goals and essentially eradicating poverty. Yet, one must question how essential a program from 1944 really is. Currently, the World Bank is dominated by a western bias since most of the loans and grants are financed by the United States and Great Britain. However, other players have entered the ring without using the World Bank as its channel. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has provided billions of dollars in aid to other Latin American countries. Furthermore, China has provided loans to Africa to strengthen its self-developing capabilities. Even though other countries are capable at playing the game of influence, the supposed bank of the “world” is still run mainly by Washington, D.C.

      While the World Bank has intentions of providing infrastructure projects in developing countries, the U.S. also has the perk of choosing who to lend or not lend its money into based on political affiliation. It is understandable that this system is in place. An investor only puts his or her money into a new company that they truly believe in. In fact, they have this right since it is their own money. Yet, it really makes me wonder whether the World Bank is an institution more concerned with funding and profit than reaching the world’s basic human need and establishing a sustainable environment. Furthermore, this western bias does not help in understanding another country’s own definition of development. The United States and Great Britain’s view of development is based on democratic fair-dealing. Truman felt that the American way of life is at stake in the evolution of poverty. Thus, there is a selfish rationale behind the investment of human capital around the world. By helping a third world nation, the U.S. hopes to reap the benefits of another nation’s productivity. In a sense, the World Bank continues the western tradition of colonization in that the West prides themselves in assisting others instead of allowing a country to emerge as a power on their own. This dependency, that Dambisa Moyo discusses, promotes underdevelopment more than propelling the nation towards development.

      Michael Goldman is correct in accrediting McNamara’s World Bank as a system of knowledge production. Although a lot of research has gone into understanding poverty, utilizing GDP as a metric of development is one of the World Bank’s flaws. It does not take into consideration of home development, children, the elderly and general well-being. The World Bank’s system of gauging development must be fixed. It results in an incorrect mentality of considering third world nations as all helpless in comparison to Western nations. While international aid can be helpful for development, there must be more transparency in where the money goes, changes in measurements of development, and more research in the necessity of projects to ensure productive economic development.

What's your opinion of the World Bank and similar deveopment institutions?

Today, Manasi, Abhishek, and I met to discuss our plans for next year's symposium. We finally came up with a theme: "A Call to Action". The symposium would showcase groups that have been able to make real change at the student level; perhaps our keynote speaker could be Blake of TOMS shoes who developed the concept of a cshoe company during his college years. We could also feature BTTR Ventures, a sustainable company started by two recently graduated Berkeley students. Even as students, we have the ability to make change. What do you guys think?