The digital divide seems to be all the rage these days. Take for instance the recent two days I spent in Chennai. The M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) had organized a Policy Makers’ Workshop at their campus in Chennai on October 8th and 9th. The workshop was supported by two “Canadian crown corporations”, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). (Those two have a budget of about Canadian $100 million.)
The workshop was a great opportunity to meet many people from the goverment ranks, …

From a recent speech by the World Bank President, Mr. Wolfensohn, one
learns a number of facts about the world. For instance, 80% of the
global GDP is owned by about 1 billion people (or 1/6th of the world’s
population.) About 1 billion live on less than $1 a day.

The rich are not only fewer in number, but their numbers are projected
to increase much slower than the increase in the number of poor. In the
next 25 years, the rich nations would add only 50 million people more;
thirty times that number, or 1.5 billion, …