The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
The discussion paper on National Environment Assessment and Monitoring Authority proposed by MoEF as an autonomous, multi-disciplinary appraisal and monitoring agency. In line with the discussion paper on NEPA dated May 25, 2010, the consultative process has been taken forward. A clearer picture is emerging on the mandate of NEPA …
This was the fourth panchayat poll when Shila Devi of Nayamatpur village cast her vote. The polls usually were a staid affair, with two or three candidates campaigning on bullock carts or on foot. But this year, the 50-something was struck by the dust raised by cavalcades of SUVs, all …
This publication suggests solutions that can be built into the design of urban development projects undertaken by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to address the common problems and grievances of the urban poor, and to improve urban governance overall. It also identifies successful or promising community-based approaches to dispute resolution …
The CDM has performed well with more than 2500 registered projects and an investment of US $ 106 billion likely to generate 1.84 billion CERs before the end of the First Commitment Period with expected revenues in excess of $30 billion. But there is an enormous imbalance in the geographical …
The relationships between energy, the environment, and development are deep and complex. The International Energy Agency has noted that energy is deeply implicated in each of the economic, social and environmental dimensions of human development. Energy services provide an essential input to economic activity, contribute to social development, and help …
Urbanisation presents us with a wealth of new opportunities and huge challenges. It has the potential to further economic development and innovation, but also threatens to exacerbate key global problems, including resource depletion, climate change, and inequality. Megacities on the move sets out to find solutions to one of the …
Education and health are commonly devolved functions to sub-national governments, even in nations which have a unitary rather than a federal structure. This paper investigates, for the specific case of a federal country like India, whether differences between states in shares of public spending on health and education show convergence …
In the final years of the Roman Republic, the Senate kept the masses happy by distributing cheap food and staging big spectacles known as the circus games to get votes. In his satires, the Roman poet Juvenal observed witheringly that governance had been reduced to panem et circenses (bread and …
The Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act of 2006 offer a great opportunity to provide equitable governance in tribal-dominated backward areas. But these laws are skeletons and need the flesh and sinews of operational rules and guidelines, removal …
In this new review paper RPCB focuses on community-based management systems and provides justification for instituting local monitoring and enforcement systems for sustainable governance of India's forests. It is essential to emphasize that strong autonomy of rule-making at the local level (and not the government-imposed rules) is a key predictor …
Mobile phones have mushroomed even as basic amenities such as sanitation has lagged. In the drought prone region of Jhansi, where governance initiatives have been as scarce as the rainfall, the district magistrate latched on to this new tool and came up with a round-the-clock toll free complaint centre.
The Right to Food and Nutrition Watch is a powerful tool to put pressure on policymakers at the national and international level to take the human right to food and nutrition into account. The Right to Food and Nutrition Watch provides a platform for human rights experts, civil society activists, …
When the water policy of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was approved in 2001, water was widely viewed as one of the greatest global challenges. The challenge was accentuated by, among others, population growth, urbanization, and changes in climatic patterns. Significant improvements were needed in water management policies and practices …
We are in a critical situation globally. We have economic and ecological crises running at the same time. What do you bring to mainstream politics? You have not mentioned the third one. The social crisis. People do not believe in anything anymore. Greed and growth have revealed the problems with …
The implementation of decentralisation reform as embodied in the 73rd and 74th amendments of the Constitution has suffered from complete negligence. The two recent articles by Oommen and Sivaramakrishnan have highlighted the inexplicable attitudes of the finance commissions and the judiciary towards decentralisation.
The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has initiated discussion on regulatory reforms with the belief that setting up an independent and autonomous National Environment Protection Authority (NEPA) will solve all problems of governance. Misguided as the belief may be, I welcome the discussion because reform in India’s environmental regulations …
