Village kiosks like these are being used as bank branches in rural India. Photo: Ben Sutherland (flickr)

India and China have been two of the most talked about up-and-coming economies of the the last decade. Predictions of their economic clout have them listed as one of the world superpowers by 2050. But Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wonders if all of the predictions don't yet come close to identifying their real potential. After recent trips to both India and China, Friedman is asks, "[w]hat if these sleeping giants are just finishing a 20-year process of getting the basic technological and educational infrastructure in place to become innovation hubs and that we haven’t seen anything yet?"

As India and China continue to vie for the top position, innovation does seem to follow. Both countries have widespread access to basic connective technology and have the know-how to support it. And both are exploiting this skill set. In India, Friedman found local kiosk owners acting as bankers. Transactions are made using cell phones, and in a country where 15 million people begin using a cell phone each month, kiosk owners are welcoming the new business.

Innovative ideas like these are designed to "to close the last mile — the gap where government services end and the consumer begins," Abhishek Sinha, the founder of the cell phone banking system in India explains to Friedman. It is in this last mile that business and innovation are flourishing in India, and perhaps Friedman is right — maybe we haven't seen anything yet.

An Israeli checkpoint in Nablus, West Bank. Photo: David Ortmann (flickr)

Since Israel relaxed West Bank checkpoints in June, there's been a newfound sense of both security and economic freedom for the struggling Palestinian territory, according to the New York Times' Thomas Friedman.

Friedman says the economic improvement is largely a result of reformed police tactics and increased trade:

For Palestinians, long trapped between burgeoning Israeli settlements and an Israeli occupation army, subject to lawlessness in their own cities and the fecklessness of their own political leadership, life has clearly started to improve a bit, thanks to a new virtuous cycle: improved Palestinian policing that has led to more Palestinian investment and trade that has led to the Israeli Army dismantling more checkpoints in the West Bank that has led to more Palestinian travel and commerce.

Recent statistics for the West Bank support the claim that things are getting better. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting 7 percent growth, and construction is about to begin on the first new town in decades, according to a New York Times account.

Friedman is hopeful that economic improvements could lead to political gains:

Make no mistake: Palestinians still want the Israeli occupation to end, and their own state to emerge, tomorrow. That is not going to happen. But for the first time since [the collapse of the 2000 Oslo peace accords], there is an economic-security dynamic emerging on the ground in the West Bank that has the potential — the potential — to give the post-Yasir Arafat Palestinians another chance to build the sort of self-governing authority, army and economy that are prerequisites for securing their own independent state. A Palestinian peace partner for Israel may be taking shape again.

A Better Place sedan made by Renault-Nissan. Photo: Better Place (flickr)

Imagine there was a new way to charge an electric car that was as quick as filling up a tank of gas. What if you had the option of plugging your car into a vast network of charging stations or — if you needed to drive longer distances — were able to simply swap out your run-down battery with a fully charged one in locations as numerous as today's gas stations?

The dawn of this new paradigm is now. Better Place, as founder Shai Agassi explains, plans to revolutionize the way we look at the electric car by “putting a massive extension cord across the entire country.”

Better Place is teaming with Renault-Nissan to offer the option to buy or lease a vehicle. Agassi's company would streamline the way we fuel these vehicles by having the driver purchase miles on their car's battery much like cell phone users pay for minutes. As Thomas Friedman of the New York Times explains, “G.M. sells cars. Better Place is selling mobility miles.”

Enthusiastically backed by President Shimon Peres, Better Place signed its first deal with Israel, and hopes to be up and running there in 2011. Better Place plans to start setting up shop soon in the Bay Area and Hawaii, with the goal to be fully operational by 2012.

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm met with Agassi in November in hopes of attracting the new start-up and the resulting manufacturing jobs to her much-beleaguered state. November's unemployment rate was 9.6 percent in the Great Lake State, which the New York Times called "ground zero in the national economic downturn."

On January 7, A123 Systems — a battery manufacturer and partner of Better Place — announced plans to build the first of two proposed battery factories in southeast Michigan. Combined, the two plants would create more than 14,000 much needed jobs. This alone would be a big economic boost to an area of the country that sorely needs it.

"Petro-authoritarianism." Now that's a mouthful.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman used the term to refer to oil-rich regimes in the developing world that funnel profits into the pockets of the powerful — and turn a blind eye to the needs of the poor.

Friedman puts Venezuela, Kazakhstan, Sudan and others in this category — countries where large oil and natural gas reserves lead to corruption, wasteful spending, military adventurism and instability.

U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) includes Nigeria, the world's eighth-largest oil exporter, on that list. "Despite half a trillion dollars in revenues since the 1960s, poverty has increased, corruption is rife, and violence roils the oil-rich Niger Delta," he writes in the Christian Science Monitor.

"The Petroleum and Poverty Paradox," a report from Lugar's U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls for improved financial transparency from governments and oil companies. It also requests international assistance to help resource-rich countries better manage their revenue.

Lugar argues it's up to the U.S. to set the standard by demonstrating its own accountability. The first step, he says, is to join the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a voluntary program that audits each participating country's oil and gas royalties.

With oil prices guaranteed to eventually spike as rapidly as they've dropped, Lugar writes, "Reversing the [resource] curse is in everyone's interest."

In the spirit of global discussion, Blog Action Day urges bloggers everywhere to concentrate on one subject. Last year it was the environment. This year it's poverty. But who says the environment and poverty have to be addressed as separate subjects?

Van Jones agrees. He's a social entrepreneur, author of the new book Green Collar Economy and founder of Green for All.

Jones says the world faces two major crises: ecological destruction and the widening gap between rich and poor. The issues may appear different, but there is a single solution: build "an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."

To Jones that means "green[ing] the bailout" by allocating $350 billion for investment in green technologies and industries: solar panels, wind turbines, weatherized buildings, wind farms and a new cadre of green-collared workers.

That's a lot of work. And there are millions of people that don't have work. I believe that the moral challenge of the next century is to connect the people who most need work to the work that most needs to be done.... We need green pathways out of poverty and into prosperity.

Jones is right. It's time we stopped thinking about these issues separately. It's time to think outside the box. It's time to green and grow the economy. Or, as Jones says in this video, it's time for a "Green New Deal."