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, …
Farmers of fragile agro-ecosystems have developed some unique integrated farming systems, to make their farms more resilient to factors like changing climatic conditions, declining soil fertility levels and decreasing farm income. While many NGOs have promoted such improved systems, it is time to reckon these systems as units of planning …
This paper re-examines the roles of changes in income and inequality in poverty reduction. The study provides estimates of the relative effects of inequality reduction versus growth promotion in reducing poverty for countries with different levels of initial poverty. The analysis uses country panel-data for 1980–2010. The results indicate that, …
At just 5.09%, Goa has the lowest percentage of below poverty line (BPL) households across states in India, as per Planning Commission statistics. But this population has grown fivefold in the state in the last 12 years, from around 7,000 in 2002 to close to 35,000 up to March 2014. …
The paper explores whether one of the largest programs in the world for women’s empowerment and rural livelihoods, the Indira Kranti Patham in Andhra Pradesh, India, has had an impact on the economic and social wellbeing of households that participate in the program. The analysis uses panel data for 4,250 …
This publication lists the organizations that have reported that they are using the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI), identifies trends among those organizations in terms of their missions and locations, and provides short case studies on a small number of such organizations. Its purpose is to commend the organizations …
Using the recent rounds of NSS data, this paper evaluates the performance and outreach of India’s public distribution system (PDS) in the rural areas. The results suggest a significant improvement in the performance of PDS in terms of its outreach and offtake. States like Bihar and Jharkhand which were lagging …
A recent Lancet article reported the first reliable estimates of suicide rates in India. National-level suicide rates are among the highest in the world, but suicide rates vary sharply between states and the causes of these differences are disputed. We test whether differences in the structure of agricultural production explain …
The world is on the cusp of agreeing new global goals to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as we approach the 2015 deadline for their achievement. While the MDGs have certainly fuelled progress on poverty reduction over the past decade, the 3rd Chronic Poverty Report shines a light on …
Energy Access and Renewable Energy - a presentation by Dr Satish Balram Agnihotri, Secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy at Anil Agarwal Dialogue 2014: Energy Access and Renewable Energy, February 27-28, 2014, New Delhi.
India’s 2005 National Rural Employment Guarantee Act creates a justiciable 'right to work' by promising up to 100 days of wage employment per year to all rural households whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Work is provided in public works projects at the stipulated minimum wage. This …
Congress slams govt for setting line at Rs 10.80; BJP figures based on Plan Panel's own statistics The fact that the Gujarat government has determined Rs 10.8 a day for rural areas as the cut-off for the poverty line in the state has raked up a controversy. Slamming the Bharatiya …
Although asset-based approaches for studying poverty have shown that the portfolio of assets households own or can access influences livelihood strategies and a variety of development outcomes, there is little research unpacking gendered dimensions of asset ownership in diverse contexts. Using data collected from the evaluation of two government land …
India has made encouraging progress by halving its official poverty rate, from 45 percent of the population in 1994 to 22 percent in 2012. This is an achievement to be celebrated—yet it also gives the nation an opportunity to set higher aspirations. While the official poverty line counts only those …
This paper investigates how a development intervention which targets extremely poor households with investment capital influences relationships between those households and the landowning elite. It places this investigation in the context of the ‘agricultural reformation’ of rural Bangladesh, whereby the growth of the non-farm economy and increased connectivity of rural …
The main objective of this paper is to propose a new analytical framework to diagnose progress toward ending extreme poverty. The World Bank has recently announced twin goals of “ending extreme poverty” and “promoting shared prosperity,” both of which are pursued in an environmentally, socially and fiscally sustainable manner. The …
This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of poverty in India. It shows that no matter which of the two official poverty lines is used, poverty has declined steadily in all states and for all social and religious groups. Accelerated growth between fiscal years 2004–2005 and 2009–2010 led to an accelerated …
Praise comes five years after it described the programme as a ‘policy barrier’ to economic development and poverty alleviation For the beleaguered UPA government, here are some words of praise. The flagship rural employment guarantee scheme has comes in for praise from the World Bank, five years after it described …
Although the world witnessed an unprecedented pace of poverty reduction over the last decades, reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty by more than 700 million, approximately 1.2 billion people remained entrenched in destitution in 2010. In order to leverage developing country efforts and galvanize the international development …
Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) was not a permanent solution for providing jobs in rural parts of the country. “I do not see MGNREGS as a permanent employment generating programme. It is a transition programme for a …
India’s sheer size and poverty have meant that addressing the needs of its hundreds of millions of poor and vulnerable citizens has preoccupied Indian policymakers since independence. Unsurprisingly, the mix of strategies, the resulting policy instruments to undergird them and their relative effectiveness have been a matter of contentious debate.
