AID-Boston celebrated with its 10th Anniversary on May 13th at MIT. AID currently has 35 chapters in the US and 40 globally and has affected the lives of more than one million people in India. The primary roles of AID has been to support developmental projects, network with grass root organizations, raise awareness, promote people’s movement and adopt conscious lifestyle changes. During the past 10 years, AID-Boston has funded 37 developmental projects. The financial support has been in excess of $180,000 with 39% going to community empowerment, 31% for education, 19% for health and 11% for environment. It is currently funding 13 projects including the Bhasha project in Gujarat, which it has been funding for over 7 years.

The celebration included two dynamic and thought provoking talks by Kalpana Karunakaran and Balaji Sampath. Kalpana is a key figure in rural development and empowerment associated with the Tamil Nadu Science Forum (TNSF) and the All India People's Science Network (AIPSN). She talked about the business of micro finance in India. Micro finance has received a lot of attention since the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was given to Yunis and Gramin Foundation. It appears to be a win-win situation for all where poor women are able to increase savings, secure credit; repayment rate is very high and for banks the entry points to rural markets. However, as a field worker, she also talked about the pitfalls. “The 20 women in a typical SAG is not a homogeneous group. The elderly, widowed and head of household women, for whom this program was primarily developed, are often unable to keep up with the minimum contributions, peer pressure and are forced to withdraw and feel ashamed of the poverty,” said Kalpana. In addition, when a SAG goes to a bank to get loans, individual women in the group are often harassed, made to repay the loan taken by other members of her family, and often forced out of the SAG by the group at the insistence of the banks. It has often been said that the lending agencies are corrupt. However, subsidy loans with nearly half the money as grant, requires setting up an enterprise. Often women want loans for their personal consumption and apply for these loans knowing fully well that they have no intentions of setting up an enterprise. As such, they are often the initiators and propagators of bribes and not the lending institutions.  

Balji, who received his Ph.D in 1997 from the University of Maryland and spurned lucrative offers from companies here and decided to go back to India as a full-time AID   volunteer, talked about the problems with education in India. The issues dealt with relevance of education to the perceived value of education amongst poor people. Balaji convinced everyone present that one must distinguish between relevance and usefulness of education. Even if the education is not relevant, everyone agrees that it is useful, that a 10th grade fail is better educated than a 5th grade fail and that getting a good education is important for betterment of life.

“Let’s compare three students. One who is 8th grade pass, one who studied up to 8th grade but can barely read, write or do arithmetic and one who is of that age but never went to school. The one who is worst off is not the one who never went to school but the one who studied up to 8th grade but can barely read, write or do arithmetic,” said Balaji. The one who never went to school is still self-confident and feels he would have been better off if he had gone or had the opportunity to go to school. On the other hand, one who studied up to 8th grade but can barely read, write or do arithmetic has no self-confidence, has always been told that he is a failure and as such is unable to do anything else. According to Balaji, “It is the quality of education, in what ever form, and the desire to read and learn along with the development of self-confidence, which are the most important elements of education.” Finally, Balaji presented the technique of educating kids using posters and charts at a nominal cost of Rs. 100 – 150 per school that AID has implemented across 7,500 of the 44,000 school in Tamil Nadu with phenomenal results in which the percentage of students who can read at a given level going up from 50% to over 80% over a period of six-months.

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