I just finished reading the much-hyped book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, which well deserves the hype. It is an extraordinary look at life in Annawadi, a slum adjacent to Mumbai’s modern international airport. Author Katherine Boo spent three years in the slum (researching, interviewing, videotaping, recording) trying to understand “how ordinary low-income people—particularly women and children—were negotiating the age of global markets.” The question that drives her is: “What is the infrastructure of opportunity in this society?” It is a critical question for any society, and one that Boo has been exploring in various poor communities for the past twenty years as a staff writer for the New Yorker. The answer she paints for Annawadi makes me question my relatively bullish assessment of India’s growth prospects. The residents of Annawadi, many of whom earn a living by scavenging through garbage, are remarkably resilient, innovative, determined, and hard-working towards their goal of upward mobility. But they are also stymied at almost every turn by a corrupt system. Read more »

In this edition of Missing Pieces, Charles Landow highlights topics from financial services for the poor to Venezuela’s presidential race. I hope you enjoy the selection.

• Banking for the Poor: Quality matters as much as quantity in expanding financial services to the poor, suggests a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Pascaline Dupas and co-authors first offered a random sample of rural Kenyans a savings account with no opening fees and simplified procedures. More than 60 percent opened an account, but only 28 percent made at least two deposits in the following year. Surveys suggested that many feared “embezzlement, unreliable services, and transaction fees.” Working with another group of Kenyans, the researchers offered vouchers that made it easier to receive loans. Six months later, only 3 percent had started to apply. According to surveys, recipients feared losing their collateral if they could not repay their loan. Clearly, financial services must be appealing and trustworthy—not simply available—if low-income people are to use them. Read more »