“Study of effectiveness of social networks for economic development at Bottom of Pyramid in Pune City”

The BOP proposition is indeed too good to be true. It is seductively appealing, but it is riddled with fallacies. This research will argue that the BOP proposition is both logically flawed and inconsistent with the empirical evidence. This has serious implications for both firm strategies and public policy. Researcher will propose an alternative perspective on how the private sector, NGO and other social networks can help alleviate poverty. The only way to alleviate poverty is to raise the real income of the poor. The poor are often geographically dispersed (except for the urban poor concentrated into slums) and culturally heterogeneous. This increases distribution and marketing costs and makes it difficult to exploit economies of scale. Virmani (2006), an economist with the elite Planning Commission of the Government of India, concedes that the improvement in social indicators in India has not kept pace with economic growth and poverty decline. While there has been a distinct shift in political ideology of the world towards an increasing role of the market (as opposed to the government), providing the above functions still needs to be in the public domain, especially in the context of the poor. This research intends to analyze the significance and contribution of Social Networks for development of BOP level.