...ASSIGNMENT ON SHAKTI PROJECT OF UNILEVER 1) What are the key features of Shakti? What are its positive aspects and what are its drawbacks? Key Features of Shakti: • This project was started in 2001 with the aim of increasing the company’s rural distribution reach as well as providing rural women with income-generating opportunities. • Villages with a population of about 2000-3000 are selected. • Personnel from HUL approach SHGs. • Selection of the Shakti Amma. • HUL vouches for Shakti Ammas with banks from credit. • One Shakti entrepreneur is appointed for one village & villages that are about 2 kilometers apart from her village. • The Shakti dealer places initial orders worth Rs.15000(principal customer of HUL) • The Shakti dealer organizes a “Shakti Day” in the village(display of products & free gifts) • The recruitment of a Shakti Entrepreneur or Shakti Amma (SA) begins with the executives of HUL identifying the uncovered village. • The representative of the company meets the panchayat and the village head and identify the woman who they believe will be suitable as a SA. • After training she is asked to put up Rs 20,000 as investment which is used to buy products for selling. The products are then sold door-to-door or through petty shops at home. Positive Aspects: • The Shakti entrepreneur program creates livelihood opportunities for underprivileged rural women. • The Shakti Vani program works to improve the quality of life in rural India, by spreading...
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...Minimum Wage Rates in the United States Algeria Robinson Kaplan University BU224 Professor Gurganious August 31, 2013 The working class citizens are extremely strong people. On a day to day basis they bear the routine rat race. It seems as soon as you clock out for the day you’re right back at work. An endless conversation by the coffee pots at work is how we the employed cannot seem to enjoy life comfortably because of several different reasons; the main reason is wage rates of pay. The people in my firm earn well above the minimum wage rate, but still have some complications financially. This in fact is intriguing; if we’re struggling to be comfortable how are those people able to survive actually earning minimum wage. In the United States the working class citizens are provided a wage by their employer for the tasks performed during their shift. For some time this wage has been under ridicule because it has been considered to be too low to survive and be at ease. The reality of this paper perhaps are shocking. It will contain that innumerable families are now struggling and striving to provide and finance their lifestyles with a single solitary income, nearly all are in need of government assistance, and the same number are long awaiting the new minimum wage to secure decent respectable wage. After speaking to one of an old high school friends she made it clear the constant daily struggle that minimum...
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...Economic Crisis: Credit Cards? Or Race Cards? The story of Economic Inequality Hung Nguyen University of Massachusetts Amherst Econ 104: Introduction to Macroeconomics Professor Robert Pollin: TA Carlos Marenta Since before the founding of our country, the American way of life has, and continues to be, hypocritical to the first lines of the Declaration of Independence. “That all men are created equal.” The lines that every American should hold dear to the heart, and many even lose their lives to uphold. America has seen many times of economic downturn, and economic prosperity. Though for African Americans; economics has been consistently been a downturn. The opportunity to play a role in, and to enjoy economic prosperity has always been an uphill battle for these groups. Racial inequality in America has always been inconsistent with equal opportunity in the job market. Which ultimately means that groups such as African Americans have always been deprived of their equal rights to fairly compete for jobs. Because the level of playing field is heavily shifted against minority groups and woman, there will always be high unemployment for these groups. What people tend to forget to realize is that this disparity in equal opportunity hurts the overall economy. When the nations employers deprive particular groups of economic opportunity, unemployment rises, and when unemployment rises, the poverty level will also rise. This is especially true for the case of African American...
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...How tax strategies impact on the Social Economic Problem? We are going to highlight some social issues and whether the tax strategy is effective in dealing with the issues. The issues discussed include the issue of urbanisation on vacant land, child poverty, inflation and unemployment. Issue 1: Tax Penalty: Eliminate Land Speculation and Vacant Land to avoid Poverty The urbanisation level of 56.25% in South Africa has recorded the world highest level in 2001. The “Apartheid City was a political economy of space which was based on two policies, i.e. racially-based spatial planning and development for some at the expense of others”. Cities were purposely designed to push poor black citizens to the margins of the city. Thus, the black population were materially distanced from advantages normally associated with city life”. With the abolition of Apartheid in 1994, the new government made a commitment to redress these imbalances and inequality and to create cities that are more equal, inclusionary, productive and sustainable. Although 1.6 million houses have been provided since 1994, they have tended to enforce traditional apartheid planning where the poor are still located on the periphery, far removed from employment and economic opportunities. This has resulted in increased urban sprawl and de-densification. Furthermore, the subsidy on public transport was more than double that spent on housing subsidy but the house prices has increased by an average of 20% per year. Land...
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...Emergence of Poverty as an Area of Enquiry The literature on poverty today is quite voluminous. The contributors to this literature came from diverse disciplines including sociology, anthropology, education, political economy, geography, agronomy, biology, nutrition etc. However, its need to be mentioned that though mention of poor, poverty, charity etc can be seen in the writing of social and moral philosophers of pre and post reformation era, the scholars have directed their attention to poverty as a distinct area of enquiry only since late fifties and early sixties of the century. The interest of scholars followed rather than preceded the interest of policy makers and lay public even though large scale poverty did not disappear from less developed counties or even developed countries after the years of great depression. The first systematic enquiry into people in want was possibly done by Charles Booth in 1886. He undertook house-to-house enquiry in the poorer district of London. His discourse used two terminologies viz. poor and very poor. He described poor as those who struggle but are able to earn sufficiently regular income to obtain necessaries of life for making both ends meet. In contrast, the very poor cannot do so and live in a state of chronic want. Booth published his findings in two volumes on “Life and Labor of the People in London” in 1889 and 1891. Booth, it may be claimed invented what is today known poverty line and also Head count of Household in poverty through...
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...self-regarding and the non-invidious or economical.” (pg. 146, 1st paragraph, lines 15-20) We are the modern survivals of a particular skill or ability. Hunting is a skill for survival, but with industrialization our food is bought prepared and even precooked. Why do we still hunt without the demand...
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...details. The talk page may contain suggestions. (January 2010) Community-based savings bank in Cambodia. There are a rich variety of financial institutions which serve the poor. Microfinance is the provision of financial services to low-income clients or solidarity lending groups including consumers and the self-employed, who traditionally lack access to banking and related services. More broadly, it is a movement whose object is "a world in which as many poor and near-poor households as possible have permanent access to an appropriate range of high quality financial services, including not just credit but also savings, insurance, and fund transfers."[1] Those who promote microfinance generally believe that such access will help poor people out of poverty. Microfinance is a broad category of services, which includes microcredit. Microcredit is provision of credit services to poor clients. Although microcredit is one of the aspects of microfinance, conflation of the two terms is endemic in public discourse. Critics often attack microcredit while referring to it indiscriminately as either 'microcredit' or 'microfinance'. Due to the broad range of microfinance services, it is difficult to assess impact, and very few studies have tried to assess its full impact.[2] Contents [hide] • 1 Challenges • 2 History • 3 Boundaries and principles • 4 Debates at the boundaries • 5 Financial needs of poor people • 6 Ways in which poor people manage their money • 7 Current...
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...hiring. Can you imagine living a life where you alter your voice to get treated fairly when calling about open housing? Such a simple task that shouldn’t be a hassle is often a process of assimilation and cultural erasure for Black people because they have to put on a “white voice.” This piece holds several elements of symbolism. It is hand stitched to resemble how African Americans helped make the fabric of this nation and that the institutional barriers they face everyday is interwoven into our society. Water color paint was also added to the fabric to not only add specific colors but to also depict free flowing experience. Water color is soaked into the cloth and once it touches the cloth, it goes as far as it pleases; it can’t be kept in lines. Having to put on a “white voice” isn’t everyone’s story. These narratives aren’t meant to put anyone in a box and say that they have to have these experiences. These narratives are just a tiny piece of the Black experience that everyone experiences a little differently. Depicted in the center of this cloth is a person’s hand holding a phone next to a mouth-less chin area of a face. The phone is orange, a bright, warm color, to symbolize optimism of equal opportunity. This brown skin person is meant to symbolize the African American people that speak in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). They don’t have a face so that all Black people can picture themselves as the one on the phone. This isn’t an issue specifically for genders,...
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...that I serve. This regulation has and will continue to affect my clients and the business that I am in and the agency I work for. The affordable health care caused our agency to become third party insurance providers to be able to continue services for the majority of our clients and to remain marketable in a system of continual change. 2. Describe the proposal or change? http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts/timeline/timeline-text.htm * Making Care More Affordable. Tax credits to make it easier for the middle class to afford insurance will become available for people with income between 100% and 400% of the poverty line who are not eligible for other affordable coverage. (In 2010, 400% of the poverty line comes out to about $43,000 for an individual or $88,000 for a family of four.) The tax credit is advance able, so it can lower your premium payments each month, rather than making you wait for tax time. It’s also refundable, so even moderate-income families can receive the full benefit of the credit. These individuals may also qualify for reduced cost-sharing (copayments, co-insurance, and deductibles). Effective Jan 14,2014 3. My Public comment would...
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...ENG 111 10 March 2014 The Reasons Why Federal Minimum Wage Is Raised U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order on February 12, 2014 to raise the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 an hour starting next year and encouraged employers nationwide to increase wages for their workers. The president also announced during his State of the Union address last month that he intended to take executive action to raise wages for federal contract workers (Mason). Order to understand this issue, we are going to understand what the Federal Minimum Wage is and when started it in the U.S.A. According to the United States Department of Labor (USDL), early in the administration of the Fair Labor Standard Act (FLSA), it started to be apparent that the use of the legal minimum wage was prone to producing undesirable efforts upon the financial systems of Puerto Rico and also the Virgin Island if put on all their covered industries. As a result, on June 26, 1940, an amendment was passed prescribing the establishment of special industry committees to find out, and problem through wage orders, the minimum, wage levels relevant in Puerto Rico and also the Virgin islands. The rates established by industry committees might be under the legal rates relevant elsewhere within the United States. In 1949, the minimum wage was elevated from 40 cents an hour or so to 75 cent an hour so for those employees and minimum wage coverage was extended to incorporate employees in mid-air...
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...Problems in developing small scale enterprises in Bangladesh There are a huge number of problems in the question of developing small scale enterprises in Bangladesh, which are discussed below: Individuality: Maximum small scale enterprises are owned by the individuals and an individual has obviously some limitation. Lower Per Capita Income: Per capita income of our people is low and for this reason our people are not being able to generate adequate capital to run the business efficiently. Unskilled Human Resources: Human resources of our country are not skilled this is a problem with developing small scale enterprises in Bangladesh. The economic environment of our country is not hundred percent suitable for operating the business another cause of the restrictions. Excessive import of foreign product: Excessive import of foreign product in our country is another reason cause when the people of the country will be mainly dependent on the imported product then the entrepreneurs will loose their interest to develop small scale enterprises. Political instability: Political instability of our country is another reason for developing the small scale enterprises rate slow. Political environment of our country is not suitable enough to run the efficient business in our society. Deterioration of Morality: Public moral is getting down means most of our people are loosing their moral and for this reason developing small scale enterprises in Bangladesh is not so easy like the other...
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...expenditure comes from low income groups f. Rising income g. Influence of Western habits h. Rising awareness of oral care benefits i. 10% growth in toothbrush sales 4. Strategy: j. Awareness: iv. IDA – 2 times free dental checkup, dental hygiene v. 3 month replacement awareness k. Distributor network – strong network vi. Training in local dialects. Awareness about toothbrush advantage l. Allocation of ad budget: vii. TV – 50% (40%) viii. Newspapers – 30% ix. Billboards and outdoor – 15% x. Radio – 5% (10%) xi. Mobile – 5% m. Bonus incentive for distributors to put in front and preference to forward credits to retailers n. Bonus incentive for sales employees o. Introduce non users to first time brushes p. Increase the incidence of brushing q. Free toothpaste sachet with neem taste Rural and Semi-urban:...
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...Fundamentals of Macroeconomics Paper This paper will include definitions of terms used in economics or macroeconomics as well as scenarios related to economics and how these terms and scenarios work together. Understanding these terms are important to doing business in today’s world and can help one gain a clearer picture of how things work in terms of money. Monetary rules help make life a bit easier by avoiding chaos, even if there are some that do not agree. One term used in economics is gross domestic product or GDP. GDP is defined as the final count on products that are manufactured within a given country and under a certain time period. The GDP includes products consumed for public and private use, government use, exports, and investments. Imports are not calculated in GDP because these goods are not produced in the specific country. The formula for calculating the GDP is GDP = C + G + I + NX. The C in this expression stands for the consumption or spending that occurs within a country during a given time period (normally a year) on the public or private sectors. The G in the expression stands for government consumption or spending in the same time frame in a given country. The I in the expression stands for the total number of what businesses within a given country spend on capital in that particular year, and the NX in the expression stands for the country’s exports – imports in that same year. Another term used in economics is Real GDP. Real GPD is defined as the...
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...Remittance VII. Import and Tax Revenue VIII. Overall Impact IX. Policy Implications I. Introduction: Genesis and Spread of the Crisis. • Root: Mispricing in the Massive Credit Default Swap Market • Sub prime Mortgage: Bank transferred credit risk to third party through the process of securitization ( MDS, CDO) • Reckless growth of sub prime mortgage-lower yield in risky mortgage • Arbitrage drove the yields on all bonds & loans down • Expansion of consumer credit, housing price bubble Intriduction continued • Unsustainability of Credit default swap and subprime mortgages exposed • Housing bubble burst → mortgage default → foreclosures→ bank and insurance failure→ credit freeze • Spillover of financial crisis to real economy through virulent credit crunch →depressed aggregate demand • Sub prime mortgage default led to spillover effects around the world (Europe and emerging economies) via an elaborate network of derivatives Continued . Global consequence of the crisis includes: • Sharp rise in Unemployment in the US, Job loss in few other countries • Sharp fall in the stock market price around the globe, current stock prices are unable to explain the value of the companies • Panic also spread around to reduce property prices in some other countries • Extra caution in lending even with excess liquidity, depressed consumer demand II. Global Recession and Low Income Countries • Channels - Although some countries with sufficient...
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...“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands: one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” These words are uttered in elementary schools, high schools, and various events and meetings throughout the nation everyday. We usually do not associate the image of welfare with the American flag or think about it as we recite the allegiance. We, however, associate it with images of prosperity and freedom. As I look closely at the last words of this allegiance: “…with liberty and justice for all.” I remember the number of homeless who beg in the streets, those who for one reason or another await assistance in the social services office, and those who because of the color of their skin or gender association have yet to receive their share of benefits. According to Webster’s dictionary, welfare means “Well-doing or well-being in any respect; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; exemption from any evil or calamity; prosperity; happiness.” Before taking classes such as this, my connotation of welfare was totally opposite. Welfare always meant something bad. When I heard the word ‘welfare’ I pictured a homeless person or an immigrant who’s only dream was a better life, but found it was not as easy as it seemed. When I heard about someone on welfare I was quick to jump to conclusions. I’d assume he or she was lazy and just didn’t want to work or that he or she was in some sort of trouble...
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