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Dr. Tara Thiagarajan

Dr. Tara Thiagarajan is presently Chairperson of Madura Micro Finance, which as the name suggests, is at its core a microfinance company in India. However, Madura goes beyond microfinance and is an evolving social experiment in reconfiguring human networks through the vehicle of a for-profit company. Dr. Tara is also presently a visiting scientist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore where she works on how distributed electrical activity in the brain can give rise to perception. After a BA in Math from Brandeis University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, she completed a PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University.
  • 6th Apr 2012
    The Hidden Key to Productivity
    Dr. Tara Thiagarajan is presently Chairperson of Madura Micro Finance, which as the name suggests, is at its core a microfinance company in India.
    Stories
  • 29th Dec 2011
    Scrap the MBA
    Resources
  • 13th Dec 2011
    Physics of Poverty : Cityscape
    Physics of Poverty series by Dr. Tara Thiagarajan, Chairperson, Madura Microfinance Ltd.
    Stories
  • 21st Nov 2011
    Physics of Poverty: Happy Nation
    Many CEOs and HR folk will tell you that happy people make for more productive employees. In fact there are even studies that demonstrate that when you are happy you are more productive. Therefore, the reasoning goes, it is important for companies to make employees happy so that they will be productive. Some even go so far as to say employees first, customers second. An article in the recent issue of Outlook on happiness made me wonder if they haven’t got it all backwards.
    Opinion
  • 7th Nov 2011
    Physics of Poverty: One World. One (Giant) Language
    Try to say this in any Indian language. I challenge you. You will fall short. Short on comparable, easily accessible vocabulary, short on that easy feel of flow and short on memories of when you last heard something like it said. English is the language of progress and possibility. English is the language of technology. English is the language of change.
    Opinion
  • 25th Oct 2011
    Physics of Poverty: Cigarettes and Swans
    In my last post, I mused about who actually knows what something is worth? Beyond survival, ‘value’ is simply collective perception, a construct of our collective mind. So what do we mean when we talk of ‘value’? What is our mind ‘valuing’ and for what purpose? For an entrepreneur this is a fundamentally important question. On a very simple level you could claim to be creating value so long as someone sees it as valuable enough to pay money for it.
    Opinion
  • 10th Oct 2011
    What is it worth?
    In 1989 as a 17 year old college student I had a childish view of what it took to get by in the world. Foolishly, I thought that $150 (7,500 Rs.) was sufficient to spend a month in Greece (it was my own hard earned money and seemed a lot to me at the time). $150, I found out, is not a lot of money. It worked out to about $5 a day. In purchasing power parity terms it was somewhere below $2 a day in an India. What followed was hardly a sightseeing tour but an exercise in subsistence living.
    Opinion
  • 26th Sep 2011
    Physics of Poverty : Relationships not Productivity?
    Some weeks ago I received a rather acerbic email from a reader lambasting me for my relentless focus on productivity. Life is not just about productivity, he said. It is about relationships. Have I thought about this? Maybe people don’t want to be working day in and day out in factories or offices.
    Opinion
  • 12th Sep 2011
    Physics of Poverty : The Glitter of Gold
    A couple weeks ago my newly married maid came asking me for a loan to pay the rental deposit on her flat. I knew she had saved up much more than the amount she needed so I asked her what she had done with the money. She told me she had bought gold jewellery with it.
    Opinion
  • 28th Aug 2011
    What do you know about village life?
    Physics of Povertyseries byDr. Tara Thiagarajan,Chairperson, Madura Microfinance Ltd.A couple weeks ago we surveyed readers like you to see what your perceptions were of rural India with regards to mo...
    Stories
  • 15th Aug 2011
    Physics of Poverty: From Subsistence to Suprasistence
    Physics of Poverty series by Dr. Tara Thiagarajan, Chairperson, Madura Microfinance Ltd.Over half the world simply subsists – caught in a cycle of supporting ones immediate survival. More than half of...
    Stories
  • 1st Aug 2011
    Physics of Poverty: A Different Species
    Physics of Poverty series by Dr. Tara Thiagarajan, Chairperson, Madura MicrofinanceThere is this strange sense of duality that India seems to bring upon you. On one hand there is this feeling of being...
    Stories