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, …
Microcredit schemes in India have recently caused scandal. The media blame them of causing over-indebted clients to commit suicide. Such reporting is overblown, but Indian microfinance certainly is in a mess.
Poverty reduction lies at the core of the global development challenge. For the international development community, this objective serves not only as a source of motivation, but as a defining theme across its work. Many of the world
The Kalahandi Bolangir Koraput (KBK) region of western Odisha is home to people who are among the poorest in India. The local environment can be difficult to live in as rainfall is irregular leading to intermittent crop failures, and there is often a shortage of safe drinking water. The health …
Inclusive growth needs to be achieved to reduce poverty and other disparities and raise economic growth. This book develops a poverty profile for India in view of the ongoing national and global efforts toward ensuring inclusive growth and bringing poverty levels down. This poverty profile will enable academics and policy …
In the factors that affect income and poverty outcomes, there are some features unique to India. Caste, ethnicity, religion and even regional origins all influence income outcomes. Therefore while examining individual poverty, the influence of social belongings on the level and the nature of access to economic endowments and the …
More than 25 lakh farmers were provided short-term loans to the tune of Rs 4 thousand 800 crore for rabi and kharif crops in the state at 3 per cent interest rate. Giving this information, Cooperative and Public Health Engineering Minister Shri Gaurishankar Bisen said that a target has been …
Although Nitish Kumar's victory in the Bihar assembly elections reflects a positive response to the development track record and the restoration of law and order in the last five years, the uneven distribution of benefits from public investment and development initiatives at the village level flows from the existing socio-economic …
This paper examines the spatial pattern of poverty in India and tries to understand how multiple deprivation leads to reproduction of poverty, with a particular focus on forest-based economies in central-eastern India.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, presented a report titled "Agroecology and the right to food" to the 16th Session of the UN Human Rights Council on 8 March 2011, in Geneva, Switzerland. The report, based on a review of scientific literature, highlights that …
This paper explores the relationship between migration, remoteness and chronic poverty in India. It addresses one of the key challenges for India, where growing levels of inequality and uneven growth have resulted in large sections of the population being excluded or adversely incorporated. Many of these people belong to remote …
This cover story in Down To Earth online charts the growth trajectory of India’s microfinance institutions and consists of a special report on the microfinance institutions in Andhra Pradesh who grew rich by lending insured loans to the rural poor.
Ega Mounika was born into debt, lived in debt and died with debts. The college-going 20-year-old of Warangal’s Karimabad village immolated herself on September 25; three days later, she died. “My daughter wanted to release us from debt,” said her father Laxmi Narayan who sustained burn injuries trying to rescue …
The total demand for micro-credit in the country has been estimated at Rs 50,000 crore. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) estimates that in 256 of India’s 626 districts the credit gap is at least 95 per cent or more. Most mfis are concentrated in these districts, including two of …
Close to two-thirds of the world's poorest people live in rural areas. Eradication of rural poverty depends on increased access to goods, services, and information, targets detailed in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. However, alleviating poverty is hindered by two interlinked phenomena: lack of access to improved energy services …
This is a comprehensive report on rural poverty, its global consequences and the prospects for eradicating it. It consists of updated estimats by IFAD regarding howmany rural poor people there are in the developing world, poverty rates in rural areas and the percentage of poor people residing in rural areas. …
Two-day workshop has been organised at Bhopal from October 19 to discuss the procedure to make available home to the poor and homeless under Chief Minister Rural Housing Mission. This workshop will be held at the Academy of Administration. Divisional Commissioners, Collectors of several districts and Chief Executive Officers of …
Across Navargaon village in Korchi tehsil of Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district one can see wheat spread out to sun on cots outside every home. The wheat is worm infested and Bhimabai Katenge, one of the residents, holds up a handful to show that the grains are nearly hollow. “This is the …
