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		Rishi Arora BA’01 As I commute by auto-rickshaw to my workplace in Hyderabad, India, every day I notice changes around the city. I see extravagant office towers being built, and new tracks of pavement overlaying what once were bumpy dirt roads. The effects of globalization and privatization appear everywhere in this city. Low manpower costs encourage multinational corporations, such as General Electric, HSBC Group, and American Express, to set up their back-office operations (for instance, call centers, technical support, and credit-card processing) here. The effects of globalization give the impression that Hyderabad is an economic boomtown. However, many people’s lives are not changing for the better, even as they shape the economic revival of a city. As I travel in and out of Hyderabad, I notice the poverty-stricken men, women, and children who work at odd hours are making way for new corporate constructions and a burgeoning middle-class population. What’s worse, the slum areas seem to disappear overnight. These areas are usually under no legal ownership or are controlled under shifty government laws. As a result, some slums become prime real estate for corporate interests and land developers. Their inhabitants have no choice but to migrate—using the very roads they laid down and passing by structures they built—to find new homes in the city’s underdeveloped outskirts. These people consequently face a harder time finding work or public transportation, and lack access to basic resources such as clean water. Current globalization efforts are making some people more affluent, while others are becoming poorer and more marginalized. Agencies such as the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, which promote and implement current globalization efforts, often neglect to assess their policies’ impact on the impoverished. Yet when sections of the population become economically insecure and their freedoms are stripped away, some form groups to mount a backlash against their perceived oppressors. For example, on November 21, 2002, a bomb blast in Hyderabad killed two people and wounded about twenty others. The incident was part of a string of attacks blamed on the People’s War Group, a guerrilla movement fighting for land rights for poor people. How then do we change globalization policies to include and benefit the impoverished? Many development authorities believe in keeping livelihoods sustainable through profitable and scalable measures. One such method is microfinance, the area I’m focusing on as part of the fellowship I’ve received through the American India Foundation. I work for a microfinance institution, Swayam Krishi Sangam (SKS), which gives poor rural women access to low-cost microcredit and savings services. SKS attempts to break the poverty cycle by giving these women very small loans for emergencies and for income-generating sources, such as livestock, cultivation seeds, and sewing machines. The women would otherwise have to turn to lenders who charge exploitative rates of interest—often as high as 72 percent a year—that would put them into debt traps. The dramatic benefits of income-generating microloans are evident in the story of one individual: Saalibai, a Banjara tribal woman from Kondapur village, about four hours north of Hyderabad. Not only are Banjaras among India’s poorest tribes, Saalibai’s situation was especially tragic. Her husband died soon after they married, leaving her with a young son. Unable to manage on her own, she moved into her brother-in-law’s house. Initially, Saalibai borrowed 4,000 rupees (about US$100) from SKS and purchased a buffalo. However, her new earning capacity prompted her brother-in-law to harass her and appropriate her money. Unable to make her weekly loan repayments, Saalibai had to sell her buffalo and return the funds she’d borrowed. But she did not lose hope. Her husband had left Saalibai a small plot of land that lay neglected because she didn’t have the means to till it. She borrowed 1,000 rupees (US$25); she then bought manure and hired local villagers to help cultivate the field. She eventually repaid her loan, making a profit of 2,000 rupees. Saalibai’s story is especially noteworthy because it’s highly unusual for a poor Indian woman to take charge of family property. She has since built a small home for herself, and has taken a second-year loan to buy another buffalo. I chose to work for SKS because microfinance has proven an effective way of helping the poor in many regions become economically self-reliant without a heavy dependence on grants or charity. And SKS has proven itself by becoming a scalable, sustainable operation that keeps a 99 percent repayment rate on all its loans. What’s more, as SKS matures and develops, it can choose to increase its practice and cover more impoverished areas, thereby granting financial freedoms to greater numbers of poor people like Saalibai. Providing access to credit does not address such problems as gender or caste discrimination, lack of education, disease, or drought. To truly alleviate poverty, microfinance must be integrated with practices such as organizing community action groups that address human rights, promoting health awareness and proper nutrition, or providing access to basic education for children. Microfinance is not the sole panacea for poverty. But it can be a very effective antidote.