The new corporate enthusiasm for the world of the poor results in productive partnerships with the NGOs or the MFIs in many developing countries. Nobel laureate Prof Yunus has perhaps shown the world that poor are not only bankable but insurable too, as well as good for doing business. In South India, for instance, the giant European insurance and financial services conglomerate Allianz is involved in a joint programme with the CARE to introduce a new type of micro-insurance. The monthly premiums of about Rs.2 are designed to be affordable for the very poor who are often left destitute by the injury or death of a family’s earning member. It took a disaster to draw attention of the European corporate giant to this gap in the market. After the Tsunami in late 2004, they noticed that they were receiving very few claims from the region, and realised that most of the victims in Southeast Asia were uninsured. The same thing happened in Bangladesh very recently after the Sidr attack in November 2007 in the southern districts of Bangladesh, and a Dhaka-based AIG-Alico’s direct sales manager observed during a meeting with INAFI, a NGO that is working on a pilot project to develop models for micro-insurance for Bangladesh’s poor, that they received only one claim amongst the millions affected, and hundreds dead.
   The idea that necessity is the mother of invention might have been especially beneficial to the insurance industry in Bangladesh. It is also applicable in the case of mobile boom where the availability of mobile phones has already led to a minor revolution in the country. While Bangladesh has 34 million plus clients, in India, more than 7 million people are taking new mobile phone each month. That’s why Vodafone, the largest cell phone company in the world by turnover, already entered into the Indian market, and wishes to enter Bangladesh soon. The industry, mainly controlled by the western corporate giants but grew up in the Southern poor countries that are gearing up for an expected two billion new customers worldwide in the next five years, 80 per cent of them are from the developing world. Companies have been successful in developing countries by employing business models tailored to local conditions. Some companies are competing with banks in many countries of Africa and Asia by offering innovative solutions in remittances transfer market. M-Banking is a technology that allows users to transfer money with a mobile phone. Cell phone customers use text messaging to transfer money to another user’s phone. The recipient can then go to a shop and convert the credit into cash. M-Banking or mobile-banking is a promising service in many countries where there are fewer rural bank or NGO/MFI branches but millions of mobile phones. Poor people in remote areas have no access at all to banks or NGO/MFI branches. Mobile phone banking now enables them to transfer money. What began as a good idea in Africa soon imported into many countries. Executives at cell phone companies are influenced that the idea has worldwide prospective business.
   Chip manufacturer Intel’s sudden interest in developing a low-cost computer is another example of the same calculation. As recently as late 2005, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett planned the 100-dollar laptop under One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project as a child’s play. But when the project began scoring initial successes within only a few months, the giant US business tycoon quickly back to business, and developed a competing product. With the result, the 250-dollar Classmate PC, Intel hopes to enter a market worth billions of dollars in emerging economies. In all these cases, the limits between charity and marketing campaigns, between a good conscience and good business, are often unclear.
   While market shares were divided up long ago in Europe and North America, Northern producers are discovering and developing new growth opportunities in poorer Southern economies. In addition to providing them with many of low-cost workers in these countries, globalisation has created a constantly growing number of consumers who can now afford luxury items like vanishing or cold cream, mobile phones or a mini soap and shampoo sachet etc. In their search for customers of the future, Western cosmetics and food giants, cell phone companies and even insurance providers have set their sights on poorer countries. People with meagre monthly household incomes of $50 up to moderate $500 would be the future potential consumers. It isn’t the handful of rich individuals only but the common ordinary people whose economic rise has only just begun that promise to deliver the true smash hit market for the future.
   Sirajul Islam
   Gulshan, Dhaka

In the world of today, after power generation, road, rail, water and air transport consume the major quantity of hydrocarbon fuels in the form of gas, liquid or solid. These fuels are either burnt directly in the vehicle’s prime mover or generate electricity used by the transport vehicles for traction. Personal or mass transport units like cars, trucks, buses, or trams and steam and electric trains inland and sea going vessels comprise by far the bulk of hydrocarbon fuel users.
   Automobile is today’s most popular form of personal transport, particularly in the developed economies. It ensures privacy, comfort, flexibility and the great advantage of point to point travel, right up to the front door. Unfortunately, it cannot drive itself; someone has to drive it. Additionally, its travel time is hampered and disadvantaged due to traffic congestions, which often upsets time schedules. Additionally, it creates atmospheric pollution, energy wastage and the potential chances of accidents and collisions on the road is always there. Automobile accidents are a source of worry and concern in most countries. These negative factors are increasing day by day as more and more cars and gasoline driven vehicles take to the streets.
   Comparatively however, buses and railway trains have the potential for automation with centralised operating controls more or less a driverless concept. The Hikary high speed trains of Japanese National Railways is actually controlled throughout its journey by central computers in Tokyo. The driver sitting in the front cab is only for psychological satisfaction of the passengers with no inputs from him whatsoever; except may be for emergency stopping which can also be done by any passenger.
   Automation technology has advanced in leaps and bounds. In the last quarter of the 20th century the development in automation has changed beyond imagination. Buses and trains in the future will combine the safety of the train, and the speed of present day commercial jet aircraft! This concept is already fairly advanced in development and except for military aircrafts, speeds are closing up for civilian transportation and point to point travel by trains now closely approaching rail transport times except in the US where aeroplanes have become a mass transport vehicle. With the surge of artificial intelligence technology, it may not be far fetched to see unmanned very high speed trains and cross-country buses running by 2020 in developed countries. As a matter of interest, the USA has already taken the initiative to develop a ‘Personal Rapid Transit’ (PRT) system that is operational.
   The PRT is envisaged as a railway like network, without the conventional trains, and timetables and transfers en-route. It is actually a fleet of automobile sized fully automated driverless vehicles, operating round the clock. Stations will be offline (on sidewalks) and track changing and direction of motion, unlike trains, will not be track based, but a built-in automated system in the vehicles electronic memory itself!
   However, forecasting any time frame for the PRTs being operational is rather difficult, as external factors and even local conditions change sometimes rapidly. However, one may expect working the PRTs in may cities of developed countries may be operational before this century reaches its halfway mark.
   SA Mansoor
   Dhaka