Eideard

State Bank correspondents Rashan and Nashir Penkar and their daughter, Icra

Time was, banks employed armies of human tellers. Later, they replaced many of them with automated teller machines. Now, India is using a hybrid of the two — the human A.T.M. — to expand banking to its vast rural population.

Swati Yashwant, a 29-year-old mother of one, is part of a growing legion of roving tellers intent on providing bank accounts to the nearly 50 percent of India’s 300 million households that do not have them. Using a laptop computer, wireless modem and fingerprint scanner, Ms. Yashwant opens accounts, takes deposits and processes money transfers for farmers and migrant workers in this small town 70 miles south of Mumbai, India’s financial capital.

To reduce the risk of robbery or theft, no transaction by law may exceed 10,000 rupees (about $212). And in practice, many amount to no more than a dollar or two. But with the bulk of India’s population living in villages that have never had a bank branch, Ms. Yashwant, with her electronic devices, is a missionary of financial modernity.

Many Indians “don’t know anything about banking,” she said in her small office here, which is decorated with a garlanded picture of Ganesh, the Hindu god believed to remove obstacles. “I want to open their accounts and help them understand banking.”

Economists and policy makers say mobile agents like Ms. Yashwant — who also are employed in countries like Brazil, Mexico and Kenya — represent one of the most promising ways to help the rural poor save and protect their money. Many people in India who do not have bank accounts, for instance, buy gold necklaces or simply keep cash in their unlocked homes…

The banking agents enable the poor to easily save money they otherwise might be tempted to spend, Mr. Banerjee said. And when times are lean, people could withdraw money they had saved, instead of borrowing cash at high rates of interest…

Ms. Yashwant is one of an estimated 60,000 of what Indian bankers call “business correspondents,” who are not bank employees but earn commissions that the banks pay them for each transaction…

For India’s banks, it is a relatively inexpensive way to recruit customers. While about 70 percent of India’s population is dispersed among more than 600,000 villages, the entire country has only 33,500 bank branches. Correspondents like Ms. Yashwant have set up 74 million bank accounts in India.

“Frugal innovation” — magic words from the Indian subcontinent across Southeast Asia to China for decades. From home-made irrigation systems powered by people – to freight companies that start with bicycles and scooters – technology that is cheap and “good enough” has been a success at modernizing economies.

RTFA for individual tales. Follow Ms. Yashwant as she establishes her personal banking network, village-by-village.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A small town in central Italy is trying to go independent and mint its own money in protest at government austerity cuts.

Filettino, set in rugged hill country around 100 km east of Rome, is rebelling against a proposal to merge the governments of towns with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants to save money. Filettino has only around 550 people, but instead of merging with neighboring Trevi, mayor Luca Sellari is trying to go it alone and set up a “principality” along the lines of the famous republic of San Marino to the north.

He has started minting Filettino’s own bank currency, the “Fiorito,” with his photo on the back, which he says is already being used by the townsfolk.

“We aim to achieve real autonomy from Italy and we have the financial resources to do it,” Sellari said in an interview on the town’s website www.principatodifilettino.com…

Mayors plan a protest in Milan Monday although media reports say the government is preparing significant changes to the budget, including a substantial dilution of the proposals on local government.

It’s a truly stupid series of proposals from the government. But what else would you expect from Berlusconi?

All they need to do is to return to printing bills from the Confederacy. It’s where the heart of their ideology resides.

If you were to come up with a list of places you’re unlikely to stumble across Google’s Street View trike snapping 360 degree panoramics, the banks of the Amazon would surely be pretty close to the top. Yet that’s precisely where the search behemoth’s imaging team is currently focusing its attention. Starting off with a 50 km stretch of the Rio Negro River, the team plans to document life in some our world’s most remote and richly biodiverse regions – visiting local communities, going inside village buildings and floating up and down the waterways to offer virtual visitors a unique insight into the wonders of the Amazon.

Often described as the lungs of the planet, the lush Amazon rainforest has been disappearing at a frighteningly rapid rate at the hands of mankind. Now thanks to Google, much of this immensely important region of the world is about to be saved – albeit digitally. Accepting an invite from the locals, Google’s Brazil and U.S. Street View teams have joined members of the Google Earth Outreach program to share their image collection expertise with non-profit conservation organization Amazonas Sustainable Foundation (FAS).

While in the area, the now-familiar Street View will be seen trundling down the narrow dirt paths that join villages and will capture images of the river, surrounding forests and adjacent river communities. Building interiors will also host an image capture tripod to give us all a sense of what it’s like to live and work in such communities. The teams will also mount the vehicle on a boat and record all-around views of the great river as it floats gently downstream, which will then be stitched together to produce 360 degree panoramas.

On completion of the project, Google will leave behind some technical equipment to allow FAS members to continue their work, and give them the means to share their way of life with the rest of the world.

Rock on!

The sludge reservoir before it collapsed

The reservoir of an alumina plant in western Hungary burst on Monday, flooding several towns with towering waves of red sludge. Two people died, seven were missing and several dozen were injured, rescue services said.

The spill of an estimated 600,000-700,000 cubic meters of sludge affected seven localities near the Ajkai Timfoldgyar plant in the town of Ajka, 160 kilometers southwest of Budapest, the capital.

In Devecser, the sludge flooded some 400 homes, and 40 people had to be rescued in the neighboring town of Somlovasarhely. In Kolontar, the rushing sludge reached a height of two meters.

The sludge, a waste product in aluminum production, contains heavy metals and is toxic if ingested…

Some 120 people, including six who were seriously hurt, were treated by medical staff. Two of the injured were in life threatening condition. The most common injuries caused by the caustic sludge were burns on the skin and eyes, said Jozsef Czirner, the regional rescue service director.

What is there to say?

Give corporate creeps minimal standards and they will work very hard not to exceed them.

UPDATE: Death toll now up to 4.

In a remote corner of rural India, a new experiment using mobile phones is bringing people news made by local villagers. The BBC’s Geeta Pandey travels to Rajnandgaon district in the central state of Chhattisgarh to see who is tuning in.

A group of villagers sit on a shaded platform on a hot afternoon in Mirche village…

Listening to their complaints and grievances are Bhan Sahu and Budhan Meshram, who are “reporters” or “citizen journalists” for CGnet Swara (Chhattisgarh Net Voice).

CGnet is an attempt to cater to people who are on the wrong side of the digital divide, says Shubhranshu Choudhary, a former BBC journalist-turned-activist and the brain behind CGnet Swara.

“We are providing a new platform which the villagers can use to talk to each other and the outside world about issues that are important to them,” he says…And the technology, developed by Microsoft Research India and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is simple.

“Reporters” call a Bangalore number to upload a news item and a text message goes out to all the phone numbers in the contact list and anyone who wants to hear the report calls in to the same number and the message is played out…

CGnet was launched in February and Mr Choudhary says the response has been overwhelming.

RTFA. Truly interesting anecdotal tales of participants and politics, people finding a voice they know is their own.

The barefoot solar engineers, Talsa Miniaka, Pulka Wadeka, Minakshi Diwan, and Bundei Hidreka, live in Tinginapu, in the Eastern Ghats of Orissa. They now have a contract to build 3000 solar-powered lanterns for schools and other institutions and they are training other people in the community.

Bravo!

When Paul C. Sereno went hunting dinosaur bones in the Sahara, his career took a sharp turn from paleontology to archaeology. The expedition found what has proved to be the largest known graveyard of Stone Age people who lived there when the desert was green.

The first traces of pottery, stone tools and human skeletons were discovered eight years ago at a site in the southern Sahara, in Niger. After preliminary research, Sereno, a University of Chicago scientist who had previously uncovered remains of the dinosaur Nigersaurus there, organized an international team of archaeologists to investigate what had been a lakeside hunting and fishing settlement for the better part of 5,000 years, originating some 10,000 years ago.

In its first comprehensive report, the team described finding some 200 graves belonging to two successive populations. Some burials were accompanied by pottery and ivory ornaments. A girl was buried wearing a bracelet carved from a hippo tusk. A man was interred seated on the carapace of a turtle.

The most poignant scene was the triple burial of a petite woman lying on her side, facing two young children. The slender arms of the children reached out to the woman in an everlasting embrace. Pollen indicated that flowers had decorated the grave…

Read the whole article. Everything from the ever-changing landscape and climate to successive cultures occupying an indyllic spot for habitation – is interesting.

Learn a bit more about when and where we come from.