In this report, ESCAP explores the future of urbanization in Asia and the Pacific, focusing on the dynamic shifts in the region’s urban landscape. It highlights the region’s demographic transformations, including population ageing, and the persistent challenges of urban poverty and inequality. The analysis covers urban areas of all sizes, …
This paper examines three software and/or information technology enabled services (ITES) industries—two in the early stages of development (in the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and the Philippines) and one mature one (in India). Being latecomers to offshoring work, the PRC and the Philippines have developed this industry in cooperation …
India's poverty line finally makes headlines. Do a rapid archival search of newspapers, at least of the past 20 years, and one finds that the poverty line never made it to the front pages. In post television boom, it never featured on prime time. But the past one week has …
India's poverty level will go up by 3.6 per cent in rural areas and 2.9 per cent in urban areas if people's expenditure on health is factored in while measuring poverty. A study by the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi redrew the poverty estimates of 2007 (the Planning Commission …
Poverty is becoming hereditary in India, at least for a sizeable population. That is the conclusion derived from a three-decade tracking of poor households in rural India. A survey by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), an international association of researchers and academicians, claims that those who are chronically poor …
At a time when courts hog headlines, this was a conspicuous slip. About two months ago, the Uttarakhand High Court admitted a public interest petition on making gross environmental productivity a co-indicator of the state of the economy along with the standard gross domestic product (GDP). The media did not …
The Centre’s debt relief scheme for the farmers has given anything but relief to the poor farmers. Despite the Rs65,318.33-crore Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme (ADWDRS) launched by the UPA with much fanfare in 2008, nearly 43.42 million (48.6 per cent) of the 89.35 million farmer households are …
A report from a sample survey of the functioning of the public distribution system in 12 villages in two districts in Orissa, a state usually associated with a poor PDS. While there are errors in exclusion and inclusion of households covered, there has been a vast improvement in operation of …
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005 which is a rights-based flagship scheme of the Government of India with effect from 2 February, 2006, guarantees at least 100 days of wage employment in a given financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do …
India has unacceptable levels of rural poverty, estimated at 42%. In some of the northern and north‐eastern states, there is an even higher level of rural poverty. Government of India has been deeply concerned about rural poverty in India. To eradicate rural poverty, National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) has been …
While using carbon credit sales to boost a company's revenues has been attempted, the new trend is to ride on the additional revenue generation potential to prune the upfront cost of the product that earns these credits. After the success of a nationwide rollout of compact fluorescent lights using the …
Bhopal: Bureaucratic indecision has resulted in the wastage of medicines worth Rs 27 lakh. The medicines bought about three years ago were meant for the rural poor undergoing treatment at Madhya Pradesh’s Hoshangabad government hospital. Sources said a huge consignment of medicines, now past their expiry date, is lying in …
To be launched on birth anniversary of Annadurai The State government has sanctioned a total of Rs. 1,157 crore for free distribution of milch cows, goats and sheep to the rural poor. Of the total amount, the scheme for free distribution of milch cows accounts for Rs. 232 crore and …
Srinagar: The state government has urged the Centre to cover the entire rural population and 90 per cent of the urban population under the proposed National Food Security Bill. Minister for Consumer Affairs, Public Distribution and Transport Qamar Ali Akhoon made this plea at a conference chaired by Union Minister …
The National Advisory Council (NAC) is expected to engage itself this week on possible changes in guidelines for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to enable ‘gram sabhas’ to plan durable assets under the 100-day employment guarantee law. The planning of NREGs work is supposed to be done at the …
The Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC), 2011 is being carried out by the Government of India to generate information on a large number of social and economic indicators relating to households across the country.
The post-199os economic boom in China is largely associated with an increasing rural-urban divide and a decline in formal wage employment in the urban sector. The case of workers in the Shenzhen special economic zone in south China is representative of this trend. When agriculture was deprioritised there was an …
United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Friday launched a rural livelihood programme, another ambitious poverty alleviation plan after the popular rural jobs guarantee scheme. The National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), launched in Rajasthan
Providing sustainable financial services for rural areas and agriculture in developing countries has proven to be difficult in spite of recent reforms and billions of dollars spent in subsidizing programs to develop financial institutions. This paper presents a literature review of the lessons learned in the use of subsidies and …
This book addresses one of the most intractable problems in development – what can poor people in rural areas do to improve their lives? Most of the one billion people living in rich countries and about three-quarters of the 5.6 billion people living in developing countries have left poverty behind …
The Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) was founded in 2000 to challenge, through research, the apparent omission of almost a billion people from the 2015 poverty target of the Millennium Development Goals. The first decade of the 21st century has illustrated the power of economic growth and human development to …
