After ten years of doing community development work in rural...

Milaap, an online platform that enables global microlending to India’s poor, recently launched an innovative new program it hopes will paint a brighter future.

In the face of lackluster public education, even poor families turn to private education. By scrimping and saving, many can afford “cheap” private school—and this is often the only way to obtain a quality education. In fact, private schools flourish in rural or low-income areas. The World Absenteeism Survey found that they were more likely found in villages in India where the public system was lacking.

By the year 2020, India is predicted to have not only the largest labour force in the world, but also the youngest. However, with the burgeoning population of urban youth and college degrees, there co-exists a pathetic state of mass sub-urban/rural unemployment statistic that makes the Indian economy seem like a convoluted paradox.

The world is reeling. It all started in 2008 with the subprime crisis in the US, which spared no corner of the globe, followed by the fall of the PIGS economies. Later, when the world was waking up to the recovery call, the Middle East fell into turmoil and a tsunami struck Japan. To add to the fire, S&P downgraded the US’s credit rating from AAA to AA+.

This unfolding story is the type of good news we all need to hear. No one enjoys reading stories of AIDS orphans in Africa. It hurts to hear of a nine year old struggling to care for his younger siblings but it is the situation which has given birth to this good news story

The sex ratio in India is about 927 girls to every 1000 boys. In many states, like Haryana and Punjab, young men have to spread their nets very wide to look for wives. This situation is similar to the one faced by China when its one child policy led to many female babies being aborted.