Global megatrends such as income inequality, climate change, demographic shifts, technological progress, and urbanisation are shaping the future of societies. Yet, their quantitative impacts on development are neither well understood nor established. This paper examines the individual and combined effects of these global forces on poverty, using both cross-section and …
This fortnight the Indian delegation to the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (wto) in Doha is going to stand out as the champion of the Third World, defending the poor of the world against the "rich man's organisation" in the words of our minister of commerce, Murasoli Maran. …
The Human Development Report 2001 has highlighted the plight of the rural poor in India. Although, India has moved up to the 115th position form last year's No. 128 with respect to the HDI, India's report-card on health continues to be dismal. According to the HDR 2001, the infant Mortality …
with the discovery of three more elephant carcasses, the toll of Asiatic wild elephants killed near Haleswar, 12 km from Tejpur in Assam, has risen to 16. A magisterial enquiry has been ordered into the death of these pachyderms. The cause of these deaths is being ascribed to villagers' wrath …
The World Bank which finances a number of development projects in Uttar Pradesh, has said the state was not doing enough to eradicate poverty. The poverty reduction and economic management division (South Asia) of the Bank said in its report that the suffering of the people had in fact increased …
Piling up stocks is not an indicator of surplus food. It simply implies that the poor at the current income levels cannot afford even subsidised food. In order to tackle the problem of poverty in poor nations in general and India in particular, we need to know several dimensions of …
participants from over 20 countries gathered in Bali, Indonesia, from September 11-13, 2001, to strategise on how to battle the myriad of problems of forest management, including illegal logging on a national and international scale. Officially known as the Forest Law Enforcement and Governance (fleg) East Asia Ministerial conference, the …
after a gap of 18 years the Union government has formulated a draft national health policy 2001, which fails to address the key issues of the national healthcare scenario. While the policy mentions several problems and inadequacies of the healthcare system, it hardly suggests any solutions. "Identifying problems is fine, …
How does vitamin A rice help solve poverty and malnutrition in developing countries? People whose staple diet is rice usually suffer from vitamin deficiencies. In Bangladesh, for instance, 75 per cent of the calories come from rice. Similarly, in countries like Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, rice accounts for 70 per …
The us President George Bush's obdurate stance on climate change has driven negotiations under the critical un Framework Convention on Climate Change (unfccc) to a feverish pitch. The world has now two options - convolute the climate treaty to meet us demands (including one that countries like China and India …
The Bush Administration declares that the theme of the G-8 summit is poverty allevation. This theme, as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice explains, is "an extension in many ways of the president's own compassionate conservatism." (Editorial)
The United Nation's human development report is known for preaching sermons about the injustice of poverty and offering solutions that advocate moving forward rapidly into the past. But this year it hits an important target. It should be mandatory reading for every self-appointed representative of "civil society" who rails against …
High levels of ‘ecological poverty’ – defined as the lack of a healthy natural resource which is essential for human society’s survival and development – are a key cause of the economic poverty of the world’s rural poor. Conversely, healthy lands and ecosystems, when used sustainably, can provide all the …
The message of community based water harvesting is spreading - not just in India but also globally. The Food and Agriculture Organisation ( fao ) now sees "increasing water harvesting and water conservation" as a key challenge for ensuring food security. For a large number of people, especially those who …
Despite the growing mayhem in city after city and town after town, neither the Central government nor any of the state governments has found a way to deal with the problem even as urban India fast drives itself into an abyss. As a result, it is courts and public-spirited citizens …
A nation like South Africa is the most dramatic example of a situation where drugs are available that would make a big difference to a sizeable part of its population that has been infected by the hiv virus but the people cannot afford to buy them. The country has more …
If you saw tv programmes or read newspapers on the latest budget, you would have thought it is only for business leaders. The manner in which business editors and columnists went overboard to seek the response of the corporate community to Yashwant Sinha's latest hat-trick of budgetary numbers shows a …
My colleague and I write a regular column for a business daily in New Delhi. It was some time back that we wrote an article on the health impacts of diesel in the same daily only to receive a legal notice to the tune of Rs 100 crore from TELCO, …
About 830 million people around the world have not got sufficient food to eat because of natural disasters, armed conflicts and poverty, says the United Nations World Food Programme. "From generation to generation, people do not have enough food to eat,' said Catherine Bertini, the agency's executive director. The worst-hit …
It was very strange indeed. Nuclear babus at an environment meeting. During the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol - the legally binding protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions - in The Hague recently, one issue, among others, that would constantly hold up progress was nuclear power. And every time the …
For a large part of the year anybody who was anybody in India talked about match fixing in cricket. When Parliament was in session there was a hue and cry over the Ayodhya issue but hardly a whisper in the corridors of power over drought. Ayodhya and match fixing became …
