David Bornstein: "Grameen Bank and the Public Good"

David Bornstein's blog, Fixes, on the New York Times website looks at solutions to social problems and why they work. Recently, he wrote a few posts on the current issues revolving around Professor Yunus and more generally, microfinance. Here is a link to one post I found particularly thought provoking. It is a great starting point to get an idea of the current discussion and also provides a few links to other papers, books and blogs for further reading. Enjoy!

Food Part 1: Lunch

I am currently renting a room in an apartment owned by my language school and classes are held in the apartment above. In addition to living in a pretty posh apartment in Dhaka, I also have a wonderful cook named Golap (a fairly common male name, which means rose). Everyday I finish language class at 1pm and come downstairs to my apartment where an amazing Bangladeshi feast awaits me. No matter what, it’s not lunch without dal-bhat (lentils and rice). This seems to be the most common food country-wide however dal can vary quite a bit, but after two months, I have yet to find any dal that beats Golap’s. In addition to dal-bhat, we usually also have some kind of sobji (vegetable curry), ruti (flat bread), and alu (potatoes). Sometimes we will have pollau, which is rice cooked in spices and oil with vegatables and traditionally meat. However, my all time favorite lunch dish is dim buna (a boiled egg in a spicy curry sauce).

Clockwise: vegetables, potatoe, ruti, dal and rice.