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 …
STUDIES on the interrelationships between gender, poverty and environmental change in rural India remain a grey area, tackled by very few economists, a notable exception being Bina Agarwal. This well-chiseled monograph focuses on variations across regions and shifts over the last two decades. It studies the impact of environmental degradation …
IN THE backward regions of the world, there is as much a need for technology as there is for organisational know-how for improving productivity. Effective administration and demand-supply management can be established by cost-beneficial electronics communications and Computer technology advances which make possible a state of 'zero-tag-time' taken to reach …
The Platform for Action is an agenda for women’s empowerment. It aims at accelerating the implementation of the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women and at removing all the obstacles to women’s active participation in all spheres of public and private life through a full and equal share …
The concept of Chakriya Vikas Pranali (CVP) can roughly be translated into English as "Cyclical System of Development". As with all translations, it is a poor copy of the original meaning. The concept originated from the famous Sukhomajri experiment. (Sukhomajri is a village in the Ambala district where the first …
PALAMAU, a district in south Bihar, is the archetype of an unfair and increasingly common socioeconomic paradox: rich land, dirt poor people. Despite its vast natural resources, forest cover, rainfall and low population density, Palamau has a dismally low development index, further lowered each passing year under the double trouble …
Looks can deceive. If you saw the meagre frame of 35 year-old Sarojini Pradhan, you would dare not suggest that she had led some 3 score women in tying up a forester who had been surreptitiously felling young sal trees. Pradhan is the president of the Mahila Mandal (women's organisation) …
FELIX murillo, chief of the Peruvian National Statistical Institute, has claimed a reduction of 8 per cent in poverty, as revealed by official surveys of standards of living between 1991 and 1994. Statistics from other sources -- including the World Bank -- say that more than 12 million Peruvians (65 …
The hatchery must go. The decision was unanimous and it bound together the 100 odd fisherfolk -- men and women -- with a common purpose. They had gathered under the red tiled roof of the New Baxipalli Mahila Sangho in Gopalpur-On-Sea, about 100 km from Orissa's capital, Bhuvaneshwar. The mid-March …
The international community may agree to do without chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) -- the chemicals identified as being primarily responsible for the depletion of the earth's ozone shield -- but the state of Arizona is not about to be bullied into doing so. The state legislature has passed a law allowing the …
Activists are pressing the 28-year old Asian Development Bank (ADB) for greater reform of its policies, saying it should do more to reduce poverty instead of just focusing on growth and luring the private sector into the region. NGOS and the ADB differ on issues ranging from indigenous peoples, policies …
ACCORDING to ecology experts, extensive nuclear testing and largescale secret dumping of radioactive wastes in the far north have transformed the Barents and Kara seas in the Russian Arctic into what are probably the most polluted waterbodies on Earth. For over 3 decades now, the 750 km-long Novaya-Zemlya archipelago and …
The smuggling of rare medicinal herbs out of Nepal is worrying environmentalists. Important herbs from the western region - including endangered ones like Panchaule, latamansi and Yarchagombu - are being carted to Nepalgunj, and then on to the rich North. Nepalese environmentalists are par '7 ticularly irked that the Pakhanbhed …
THE setting up ofthe Inspection Panel in September 1993 as a permanent body which will monitor World Bank-funded projects is a significant, far-reaching development. Unfortunately, the World Bank (WB) governing board of executive directors' mode of selection of sensitive areas was highly disappointing. There have been serious objections to the …
THE Aravallis, the oldest and hoariest mountain range in India, are today some of the most barren sentinels in the country. At the foothills of this range, which extends all the way from Haryana to Rajasthan, lie villages which live in desperate poverty, lacking food and water. Aravalli Paharian Hariali …
Sri Lankans im hotting up about an ambitious anti-poverty scheme to be launched in June. Us Samurdhi, about 100,000 families earning below US a month will get a direct income transfer of a little 4 US $20 a month from the government. The remais 1. 1 million families earning less …
TO DAHELI and her husband Lalia, a conference of the order of the World Social Summit for Development has little significance. Daheli is a plump, middle-aged tribal peasant woman, belonging to the Mankar subtribe of the Bhils, residing in a village called Attha in the Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. …
THE dirty linen of the developed countries was brought out in the open and, as expected, created a furore. The setting was the 3-day workshop on the Basel Convention held in Dakar, Senegal, between March 15-17. Green activism had already heated up the debate on the transboundary movement of hazardous …
THE World Summit for Social Development, held recently in Copenhagen, was convened to discuss 3 of the most critical issues facing humankind today--poverty, unemployment and social exclusion. Three UN official statements, prepared by NGOs prior to the Summit, were considered for the final NGO statement--the Oslofjord Declaration, the New Agenda …
ONLY the pathologically optimistic expected the recently-concluded un World Summit for Social Development to trumpet to a momentous, pathbreaking climax. "Anything that we developing countries wanted, they (the industrialised nations) voted as a bloc against us," said a disgusted Mercedes Arzu Wilson, a Guatemalan government delegate, at the end of …
JULY 16, 1945. With a deafening roar, a part of the New Mexico desert blew up into an umbrella, with the brightness of a thousand suns: America had exploded its first atomic bomb. Only 4 years later, rival Russia echoed that blast in Semiplatinsk. And 40 years after the dust …
