Esteemed Friends:					July 2, 1999

In an authoritative study by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, we find that
although China and India had a similarly low base of economic and
social achievement about 1949 (Chinese Revolution) and 1947 (Indian
independence) the divergence in achievement since then has been stark:
adult literacy in India is 49% versus 60% in China, under-5 mortality
in India 145 per thousand but is 47 in China, longevity in india is in
the 50's but in China it's in the 60's. In recent years the Chinese
have the good fortune of at least twice as high a GNP growth rate
vis-a-vis India. China has a particularly superior public distribution
system and social security programmes.

To think globally and act locally, let's take the state of Orissa for
instance. For the masses to make longterm, sustainable progress we
need to make bottom-up and top-down progress. Would you bet all your
bottom dollars for the top-down progress orchestrated by our political
leaders and handed-down to the masses? Or, would you invest in your
own destiny and effect the necessary change consciously -- no matter
what it takes?

Now, the Chinese progress is not without blemishes: the great Chinese
famine of 1958-61, perhaps causing the largest recorded mortality from
hunger, followed the so-called Great Leap Forward, and the slow
process of democratization marked by the Tinanmen Square was bloody.
As for the famine, enormous collapse of the agricultural output and
income coupled with policy failures causing decline in food
distribution and inequity in sharing were to blame.  And yet, that
nation seems to have largely recovered and there is no reason for the
people of Orissa or India to be fatalistic about their present
conditions. Humanistic progress wihin the boundaries of India is
itself varied: we can draw inspiration from the strides Kerala has
taken in achieving adult literacy of 71% among women and 86 for men,
an average longevity of 66 years and superb distribution system going
beyond urban boundaries to support rural poulation. In fact, in 1817
the visionary Queen Gouri Parvathi of Travancore issued a rescript
commanding that "the State should defray the entire cost of the
education of its people in order that there might be no backwardness
in the spread of enlightenment among them, that by diffusion of
education they might become better subjects and public servants and
the the reputation of the state might be advanced thereby."

Your organization SEEDS is attempting to address precisely these
issues, bottom-up, in it own small ways while encouraging other
individuals and organizations to do the same and more.

The great bard, Shakespeare, wrote:
 To be, or not to be: that is the question,
 Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
 And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep;

Your past and future support remains the inspiration and sustenance
for this volunteer, avocationary organization, SEEDS. Two of our
currently running major projects are the ASRA project and the Dalijoda
project. Gopal Mohapatra has compiled the set of SEEDS projects and I
am appending it to the end of my short report.

This year we have taken up a major new project involving
"micro-enterprise" for poor but enterprising women of the Amarda
Grampanchayat of Rasgobindpur Block of Mayurbhanj with a SC/ST
population more than 50%.  This area is economically a typical area of
eastern Orissa, not the poorest in the state, but poor enough and the
project proposal from the NGO, Unnayan, was promising enough for us to
believe that a sustainable alleviation of socio-economic condition is
viable through a microlending project. There are very few functioning
micro-lending institutions in Orissa.

This Unnayan project will focus on collection, stiching and
plate-making of Sal-leaf and the production of Bamboo baskets.  We had
a very vigorous discussion among SEEDS volunteers and Unnayan on the
best way to make this micro-enterprise cum micro-lending project most
successful and long-termwise viable.  I want to take a moment to thank
our new activist members and we look forward to more joining us. They
were of great help in critiquing and improving the Unnayan proposal.

We learnt that the Asian experience has identified the following five
success criteria to assess the effectiveness of any credit-for-poor
programme: (i) the extent to which the programme has reached the truly
poor; (ii) loan recovery (measured by repayment rate) which indirectly
reflects the productivity/profitability of the loan as well as
borrowers satisfaction and support of the programme; (iii)
productivity of the loan measured in terms of returns on investment;
(iv) impact on borrowers income and sustainability at the programme
level; (v) non-economic objective of a credit programme such as
empowerment of rural women, increasing their status in the family,
etc. Formation of groups with homogeneous background and interest
which is a key to the success of the credit linkage programme
gradually leads to a situation where the self-help groups transcend
economic issues and are induced to take up other related issues.The
successful experiment of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh has an inbuilt
social development agenda, as all the members of the self-help groups
are required to obey the norms already fixed for the members, i e, 16
principles/commandments, which have a social overtone...


Finally, a few words about the financial status of SEEDS: SEEDS has
collected over $25,000 dollars in the last five plus years of
existence from its activist members and generous donors among you. We
now have a balance of about $20,550 in the SEEDS bank account and with
a commitment of about $10,000 payable to the current projects. Last
year we raised about $3000 for the Adopt-a-student project and we
continue to be a "negative-overhead" volunteering organization. The
volunteers continue to spend own money on incidentals and get the jobs
done. We are in dire need of volunteering support and financial
donation for taking up larger and more widespead projects. We are also
looking for collaboration with other like-minded groups with
operations in Orissa or elsewhere in India.

One last thing I want to report is last year SEEDS was registered as a
non-profit organization and this year I have applied for the IRS
tax-exemption status for which we are going through some revision of the
application.  If we are granted the tax-exemption status, it will be
effective retroactive to May 11, 1988.

Finally, I want to gratefully thank all my SEEDS colleagues for their
numerous hours, selfless help in running the organization and commendable
research on microlending topics.

With Best Regards,
Priyadarsan