Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said last Sunday that his country’s annual growth target has been lowered to seven percent for the next five years. He made this remark in an on-line chat with the nation. “We must no longer sacrifice the environment for the sake of rapid growth as that is unsustainable,” he said. He urged the government to shift its focus from GDP growth to the quality and benefits of growth.

 “The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.” In these famous lines, John Steinbeck, goes to the root of our present crisis in public morality.

Although human life is less than the blink of an eyelid in terms of the universe, it is staggering what it is able to create. Thirty million (yes, three crore!) poor women in Indian villages have taken small loans and started enterprises. With the loan they buy a cow to sell milk, or invest in a sewing machine to sell clothes or open a small kirana shop. What began as charity work by NGOs has become self-sustaining business, thanks to the entry of professional microfinance companies (MFIs) who are gradually replacing the village moneylender.