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The Humanities of Crisis: Climate Change and the Discipline

From scientific upheavals in the Early Modern to world wars in the twentieth century, Humanities has responded to the crisis and also reinvented itself in terms of methodologies and fields of inquiry....

by Pramod K. Nayar | On 15 Nov 2021

Know Your Publishing Space: Institutional Repositories

Institutional repositories(IRs), if established in various universities, would help bring out the contributions by Indian researchers on the world map, especially in the field of Arts, Humanities, and...

by Shubhada Nagarkar | On 19 Feb 2021

Grand Challenges for the Humanities in India:

In January 2019, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) tasked Professors Nirmala Menon (IIT Indore) and Sumathi Ramaswamy (Duke University) with the following: To identify 10 grand challen...

by | On 18 Jan 2021

eSS Sunday Edit: Humanities and the Public Good

Constitutions and founding principles, including our own, were drafted by those who studied Humanities and its cognate fields, which helped them see far into the future. The plan and vision remains, a...

by Pramod K. Nayar | On 07 Jan 2021

Urban Development Perspectives of Affordable Housing Strategy

Although, under the current institutional dispensations, both national and local governments have significant roles to play in providing infrastructure, services and housing in urban areas, the limite...

by Narayanan Edadan | On 08 Oct 2020

MESSAGES ON COVID-19 PREVENTION IN INDIA INCREASED SYMPTOMS REPORTING AND ADHERENCE TO PREVENTIVE BEHAVIORS AMONG 25 MILLION RECIPIENTS WITH SIMILAR EFFECTS ON NON-RECIPIENT MEMBERS OF THEIR COMMUNITIES

During health crises, like COVID-19, individuals are inundated with messages promoting health- preserving behavior. Does additional light-touch messaging by a credible individual change behavior? Do t...

by Abhijit Banerjee | On 14 Jul 2020

A New Approach to Social Sciences, Humanities in a Time of Crisis

Can use the COVID-19 time to slow down, take stock and develop fresh approaches for the social sciences and humanities?

by | On 22 May 2020

Shared Responsibility, Gobal Solidarity : Responding to the Socio-Economic Impacts of COVID-19

The current global health crisis is unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations — one that is killing people, spreading human suffering, and upending people’s lives. But this is much more...

by United Nations (UN) | On 24 Apr 2020

Environmental Governance and Environmental Performance

Along with the continuous development of the global economy, environmental deterioration has been widely recognized as a pressing issue nowadays, bringing environmental governance to the forefront of...

by Chun-Ping Chang | On 28 Mar 2019

Human Rights Watch World Report, 2019. Events of 2018

World Report 2019 is Human Rights Watch’s 29th annual review of human rights practices around the globe. It summarizes key human rights issues in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, draw...

by | On 27 Mar 2019

Guidance Note of the Secretary-General : The United Nations and Land and Conflict

Over the coming decades, competition and conflict over land is likely to intensify with the growing pressures of climate change, population growth, increased food insecurity, migration and urbanizatio...

by Secretary-General United Nations | On 21 Mar 2019

Innovation, Efficiency and Inclusion: Integration of Digital Technologies in the Indian Microfinance Sector

This paper explores how these mechanisms - innovation, inclusion and efficiency – have been integral to microfinance operations in the past, and how innovations in digital technology may be yet anothe...

by Saon Ray | On 04 Feb 2019

How Do We Prevent a Food Crisis in the Midst of Climate Change?

The current global warming trends are extremely likely to be the result of human social and economic activity since the middle of the 20th century (NASA 2018). Evidence of rapid climate change varies...

by Kunmin Kim | On 21 Nov 2018

Insights from Behavioral Economics on Current Policy Issues

The paper examines behavioral constraints in policy-making and in achieving coordination across policies. First it applies psychological concepts to understand policy inadequacies, and next examines h...

by Ashima Goyal | On 29 Oct 2018

Strengthening India’s External Intelligence Infrastructure: An Assessment .

This paper outlines a number of points, which would help to develop a more superior external intelligence infrastructure. In absence of a national security strategy (NSS), the task of intelligence age...

by Shantanu K. Bansal | On 04 Sep 2018

Assessing the Effects of Simple and Complex Innovation Strategies on the Performance of Firms in the Philippines

Innovation is the synergistic use of resources, technology, capital, and information to achieve growth at different levels of the economy. Many studies abroad have already supported the hypothesis tha...

by Connie Bayudan-Dacuycuy | On 27 Aug 2018

Financing Solar Photovoltaic Transition: From Utility to Residential Market Adoption in Emerging Economies

This paper examines the advantages and disadvantages of different financial schemes for introducing PV facilities in terms of the suitability of funding vehicles and investment mechanisms. Given the p...

by Ranaporn Tantiwechwuttikul | On 13 Aug 2018

Assessment of the BUB Program: Improving Access of Local Communities to Basic Services and Strengthening Social Capital

The Aquino administration through the Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cluster (HDPRC) and Good Governance and Anti-Corruption Cluster (GGACC) launched the Bottom-up Budgeting (BUB) exercise in...

by Rosario G. Manasan | On 05 Jul 2018

Analyzing Decisiveness of Migration Intentions: Social Kinship that Matters

This paper therefore argues that using aggregate measures like migration incidence in an area wherein homogeneity is assumed and obtaining a significant and positive effect may erroneously amplify the...

by Aubrey D. Tabuga | On 28 Jun 2018

On Existence and Properties of Pure-strategy Equilibria under Contests

This paper strictly convex cost functions and demonstrate existence of pure strategy Nash equilibrium for the difference form. Moreover, it shows that several properties of equilibria and the comparat...

by Sakshi Gupta | On 22 Jun 2018

Fair play in Indian Health Insurance

In recent years there has been an increased role for health insurance in Indian health care, through government funded health insurance programs and privately purchased health insurance. Our analysis...

by Shefali Malhotra | On 15 Jun 2018

Federalism, Fiscal Asymmetries and Economic Convergence: Evidence from Indian States

This paper tests economic convergence across States in India by incorporating federal fiscal asymmetries and differentials in gross fixed capital formation at the state level. Using dynamic panel mode...

by Lekha Chakraborty | On 15 Jun 2018

Financial Inclusion, Regulation, Financial Literacy and Financial Education in Armenia

Financial inclusion has significantly advanced in Armenia during the last decade. Rural and urban areas, however, have benefited unevenly. The high cost of providing financial services, the lack of ph...

by Armen Nurbekyan | On 07 Jun 2018

Adjustment to Trade Opening: The Case of Labor Share in India’s Manufacturing Industry

This paper is to studies how manufacturing plants in India adjusted to trade liberalization during the period 1998–99 to 2007–08. It estimates how the labor share changed due to tariff reduction. The...

by Prachi Gupta | On 05 Jun 2018

Growth and Childbearing in the Short- and Long-Run

Despite being key to theories of economic growth and the demographic transition, evidence on how fertility responds to aggregate income change is mixed. We analyze economic growth and fertility chan...

by | On 08 May 2018

The World Development Report 2018 —LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise

The World Development Report 2018 (WDR 2018)—LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise—is the first ever devoted entirely to education. And the timing is excellent: education has long been critical to h...

by World Bank [WB] | On 04 May 2018

Restorative Care: Integral to Access to Justice

Existing research on “access to justice” has shown how the understanding of the term developed as the human rights approach gained ground. The conventional notion of access to justice was limited to s...

by HAQ: Centre for Child Rights | On 20 Apr 2018

Nepal Human Development Report 2014: Beyond Geography Unlocking Human Potential

The report presents a rigorous statistical analysis across space and time, using the available national data.

by National Planning (NPC) | On 13 Apr 2018

Thailand”s Seafood Slaves: Human Trafficking, Slavery and Murder in Kantang’s Fishing Industry

This report recalls and builds on the recommendations made in EJF’s 2015 report Pirates and Slaves.

by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) | On 10 Apr 2018

Human Trafficking in Taiwan’s Fisheries Sector

Taiwan has one of the world’s largest DWFs, with over 1,800 vessels flying the Taiwanese flag operating across the world and hundreds of Taiwanese-owned vessels flying other flags.

by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) | On 09 Apr 2018

People, Policy and Partnership for Disaster Resilience Development: Proceedings

The report says that the Bunkar Samiti was establised to create a common platform for sustainable livelihoods.

by National Alliance Risk Reduction (NAADRR) | On 05 Apr 2018

Shaping the Future: How Changing Demographics can power Human Development

The report says that the opportunities they have and the choices they make determine the course of human development—nowhere more so than in Asia-Pacific, home to half the world’s population.

by Thangavel Palanivel | On 03 Apr 2018

Characteristics of the Workers in the Urban Informal Sector of Pakistan

The informal sector is widely considered as a crucial segment of the economy, whose mere presence convince the policy-maker to reorient the development strategy to promote jobs and equity.

by A. R. Kemal | On 02 Apr 2018

Human Capital and Income Equality

This study investigates empirically how human capital, measured by educational attainment, is related to income distribution. The regressions, using a panel data set covering a broad range of countr...

by | On 30 Mar 2018

Education and Earnings In Pakistan

The conventional theory of human capital developed by Becker (1962) and Mincer (1974) views education and training as the major sources of human capital accumulation that, in turn, have direct and pos...

by Zafar Mueen Nasir | On 29 Mar 2018

The Underground Economy and Tax Evasion in Pakistan: A Fresh Assessment

Recently, not only economists but also sociologists, political leaders, policy-makers, non-governmental organizations, and the press are taking a lively interest in the size of the under ground econom...

by Zafar Iqbal | On 28 Mar 2018

The Role of Total Factor Productivity Growth in Middle-Income Countries

We examine the importance of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in middle-income countries based on cross-country panel data for the period 1975–2014. We find that TFP growth contributed signific...

by | On 23 Mar 2018

Stories of Empowerment – Case Studies of Empowerment of Rural Workers

With a population nearing 60 million, half of which occupies the two major cities of Karachi and Hyderabad, Sindh is the only province with a rural population in the minority. Research conducted by PI...

by Salman Rashid | On 21 Mar 2018

Status of Labour Rights in Pakistan 2015

The PILER 2015 Report on the Status of Labour Rights, fifth in the series, based on secondary research, aims to present an overview of the status of labour and the issues in the year impacting labour...

by Pakistan Institute of Labour Education & Research (PILER) | On 21 Mar 2018

Long-term Implications of Humanitarian Responses: The Case of Chennai

Following the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, Tamil Nadu lost about 8,000 people and the lives and livelihoods of over 897,000 families were affected. In 2015, Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nad...

by | On 09 Mar 2018

Women and Land in the Muslim World: Pathways to Increase Access to Land for the Realization of Development, Peace and Human Rights

This report looks at global normative work, regional frameworks, and good country level practices, it provides an analysis of the most important aspects to be taken into consideration to successfully...

by Ombretta Tempra | On 09 Mar 2018

India: A Fab-less Wonder: Case of SMDP

From IPod to I Pad, millions of electronics goods have rolled out of China, the global manufacturing hub. India’s share of global electronic product market is less than 3%. Taiwan had $72 billion of...

by A S Rao | On 07 Mar 2018

Fieldnotes on Caste Practices among Muslims of Nohsa Panchayat

The paper says that the commonly held view is that the caste based stratification is a feature of the Hindu model of social organization.

by Khursheed Akbar | On 22 Feb 2018

Militarisation and Armed Conflict

India's claim that all human rights violations are redressed stands sharply refuted by the report of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) which in its report to UPR2 stated that AFSPA remains i...

by Working Group on Human Rights (WGHR) | On 21 Feb 2018

On Some Currently-Fashionable Propositions In Public Finance

The paper says that putting the matter differently, the price-system plays multiple roles: it acts as a signal for the use of available resources for producing at any particular point on the Productio...

by Prabhat Patnaik | On 19 Feb 2018

Higher Education and Development in Kerala

The paper says that despite high levels of literacy, near universal enrolment in elementary education, high levels of social and human development, why could Kerala not transform itself into a prosper...

by Jandhyala Tilak | On 14 Feb 2018

Performance and Challenges of the UN Human Rights Council : An NGOs’ View

The current dynamic within the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has driven the Council in certain cases to function more closely in accordance with normative standards, as well as with the reality on t...

by | On 12 Feb 2018

Biological Weapon, Infectious Disease and India’s Security Imperatives

The report says that the fact that transnational spread of disease does pose a threat to national security, is well entrenched now.

by Animesh Roul | On 09 Feb 2018

Budget 2018: Highlights of the Draft FY2018 Japan Budget

FY2018 budget, the budget for final year of the intensive reform period set in the Fiscal Consolidation Plan, continues to pursue both economic revitalization and fiscal consolidation.

by | On 09 Feb 2018

Governance Dilemmas of Sustainable Cities

This paper aims to scrutinize the dilemmas involved in governing sustainable cities, and it offers a suggestion for how the challenge might be addressed.

by Joakim Öjendal | On 08 Feb 2018

Economic Survey 2017: Volume II, Chapter 10: Social Infrastructure, Employment and Human Development

The report says that investment in human capital is a prerequisite for a healthy and productive population for nation building.

by Arun Jaitley | On 31 Jan 2018

China’s Development Finance to Asia: Characteristics and Implications

The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of possible shift in China's overseas development finance strategy since 2011.

by Oh Ah | On 31 Jan 2018

Social Infrastructure: Way Forward

The tenth chapter of Economic Survey 2018 has sown that investments in social infrastructure and human development has paid off well. The policies and schemes have also been mentioned in detail. The g...

by Lakshmi Priya | On 31 Jan 2018

Arctic Council and Asian Initiatives

The paper also examines the Indian narrative on the Arctic and argues that it is important to monitor the evolving developments in the Arctic region.

by Vijay Sakhuja | On 24 Jan 2018

Nuclear Weapon: Issues, Threat and Consequence Management

The brief says that invention of nuclear weapons, the ultimate among the three weapons of mass destruction, has given rise to completely novel conditions that have fundamentally affected the concept o...

by Animesh Roul | On 22 Jan 2018

Ebola Outbreak: Lessons Learnt and Future Challenges

The article discusses the devastating effect of Ebola outbreak and challenges in terms of combating this lethal disease.

by Anshu Joshi | On 18 Jan 2018

The Politics of Institutional Reform and Post-Conflict Violence in Nepal

How does the reform of state institutions shape prospects for peace after war? Existing re- search on the institutional causes of peace focuses on how institutional designs, as the out- comes of ref...

by Julia Strasheim | On 17 Jan 2018

Technological Change, Automation and Employment: A Short Review of Theory and Evidence

A selective survey of recent papers in the area of technological change, automation and employment is presented. The objective is to convey analytical ideas and the empirical evidence that have inform...

by K. V. Ramaswamy | On 16 Jan 2018

Inequality, Employment and Public Policy

This paper examines dimensions of inequality including labour market inequalities and discusses public policies needed for reduction in inequalities. It discusses both inequality of outcomes and inequ...

by S.Mahendra Dev | On 16 Jan 2018

Nation State Boundaries and Human Rights of People in South Asia

The present study seeks to examine the issue of human rights violations in the border areas of countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region. It is in an effort to...

by | On 12 Jan 2018

People, Policy and Partnership for Disaster Resilience Development

The paper narrates about the proceedings that were centered on a wide range of community level risk reduction efforts that are effectively reducing vulnerabilities as well as influencing development p...

by National Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction NADRR | On 10 Jan 2018

Mapping Spaces For Democratic Participation In South Aceh Indonesia

The paper explored participatory aspects of local democracy in Aceh and some major challenges in South Aceh for people’s participation in local decision-making processes.

by Leena Avonius | On 08 Jan 2018

WTO Negotiating Strategy on Environmental Goods and Services for Asian Developing Countries

The paper advocates carefully tailoring EGS liberalisation so that it can deliver meaningful trade and development benefits while responding to environmental priorities in Asian developing countries.

by Vicente Yu III | On 01 Jan 2018

Dispute Settlement in the WTO and the Least Developed Countries: The Case of India’s Anti-Dumping Duties on Lead Acid Battery Import from Bangladesh

This paper looks at the case where India contested the tariff concessions granted by the members of the European Communities (EC) to twelve developing countries under its Generalised System of Prefere...

by M. Taslim | On 29 Dec 2017

Urban Refugees in Delhi: Self-Reliance can’t be Exclusively Entrepreneurial

Self-reliance is, by definition, about individualised responsibility for social wellbeing and economic security. This idea drives urban refugee livelihood programmes, in India and beyond, as aid organ...

by | On 22 Dec 2017

Effects of Financial Market Imperfections on Indian Firms‘ Exporting Behavior

Using data from more than 6,000 manufacturing firms in India for 1996–2008, we investigate the impact of financial constraints on the exporting behavior of Indian manufacturing firms while also focusi...

by Hiro Ito | On 21 Dec 2017

India China: Rethinking Borders and Security

Fifty-five years after China and India fought a war over an ill-defined “colonial” border in 1962, war clouds have gathered again during this monsoon season on the contested Himalayan ridges and valle...

by Anirudh Deshpande | On 14 Dec 2017

Characterization Of Agricultural Workers In The Philippines

The paper narrates that the inclusive growth requires boosting incomes of workers currently in agriculture, either by shifting them to better-paying jobs outside agriculture or raising wages within ag...

by Roehlano M. Briones | On 13 Dec 2017

The Effect of Age-Specific Sex Ratios on Crime: Instrumental Variable Estimates from India

Using data from 1961 to 2001, the paper shows the impact on crime of two age-specific sex ratios corresponding to pre-marital (ages 10 to 16) and marriageable (ages 20 to 26) age groups in India. To d...

by Rashmi Barua | On 12 Dec 2017

Evaluation and Assessment of the Effectiveness of the DSWD Internal and External Convergence as Operationalized by the Regional, Provincial, and City/Municipality Action Teams

This study aims to describe and examine organizational structures, business processes, and capacity development, as they relate to the design of DSWD’s Convergence Strategy.

by Jose Ramon G. Albert | On 11 Dec 2017

Informal Economy Budget Analysis in Philippines and Quezon City

The study says that the poverty reduction targets in the Philippines were incorporated for the first time in the 1987–1992 Development Plan and, after that, anti-poverty became the centerpiece program...

by Francie Lund | On 07 Dec 2017

Adverse Welfare Shocks and Pro-Environmental Behaviour: Evidence from the Global Economic Crisis

This paper examines the effects of the 2008–09 global economic crisis on people’s pro-environmental behaviour and willingness to pay for climate change mitigation. The paper hypothesise that the crisi...

by Artjoms Ivlevs | On 28 Nov 2017

A Region at Risk : The Human Dimensions of Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific

Asia and the Pacific continues to be exposed to climate change impacts. Home to the majority of the world’s poor, the population of the region is particularly vulnerable to those impacts. Unabated war...

by Asian Bank | On 23 Nov 2017

Freedom of Expression in Pakistan: A myth or a reality

The study adopts a qualitative approach to understand the power dynamics and draws out conclusions from a wide variety of stakeholders regarding the issues at hand.

by Sadaf Liaquat | On 23 Nov 2017

Pakistan’s Highly Taxed Telecom Market: Fall out and Impact

The study aims to create awareness among both the public and private sectors about the importance of exploiting useful information resources.

by Brig (Retd) Yasin | On 21 Nov 2017

The Effect of Public Sector Development Expenditures and Investment on Economic Growth: Evidence from Pakistan

The study will use data from 1980-81 to 2015-16 in this regard and employ Johansen cointegration to investigate the long run relationship.

by Syed Ahmed | On 20 Nov 2017

Creating Good Employment Opportunities for the Rural Sector

This paper examines the potential for sector-specific productivity growth, human capital, credit markets, and infrastructure to contribute to the development of stable, well-paid employment in rural a...

by | On 20 Nov 2017

Impact of Human capital on Economic Growth: Evidence from Pakistan

The papers says that there is a need to invest in educational sector to maximize the human capital, which not only helps in economic growth but also contributes to economic development of the country.

by Syed Kazmi | On 17 Nov 2017

Another War Is Looming

The study discusses the problems Pakistan may face in near future in the hands of Pakistani volunteers fighting in Syria.

by Rubab Syed | On 16 Nov 2017

Can Anyone Hear Us ? Voices From 47 Countries

This study is part of a global research effort entitled Consultations with the Poor, designed to inform the World Development Report 2000/1 on Poverty and Development. The research involved poor peop...

by | On 07 Nov 2017

Skilling India's Workforce

The report says that current capacity of 4 million workers per annum is grossly inadequate.

by Shri Ranganath | On 03 Nov 2017

Corporate Social Irresponsibility: Companies & PC&PNDT Act

Female foeticide because of preference for boys over girls for a host of reasons is gigantic in India. According to the estimates of Asian Centre for Human Rights, during 1991 to 2011, a total of 25,4...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) | On 26 Oct 2017

Subjective Probability Does Not Exist

The report shows that the rationality arguments used to establish the existence of subjective probabilities depend essentially on the identification of acting-as-ifyou-believe and actually believing.

by Asad Zaman | On 26 Oct 2017

Central Bank Communication: The Practice in Nepal Rastra Bank and Impact on Inflation

The paper says that it will contribute to make monetary policy more effective and thus enhance its impact.

by Sarthak Karki | On 06 Oct 2017

Learning: To Realize Education's Promise

The report narrates that for societies, it spurs innovation, strengthens institutions, and fosters social cohesion.

by World Bank [WB] | On 04 Oct 2017

Migrant Smuggling Data and Research: A Global Review of the Emerging Evidence Base

The report narrates that the diversity of smugglers has been examined in the academic and grey literature.

by Marie McAuliffe | On 25 Sep 2017

Augmenting Small Farmers Income Through Rural Non-Farm Sector: Role of Information and Institutions

The paper discusses the nature and extent of non-farm activities in India using India Human Development Survey unit record data. An exercise carried out to understand the determinants of income from n...

by Meenakshi Rajeev | On 11 Sep 2017

Tamil Nadu Migration Survey 2015

Tamil Nadu is the eleventh largest state by area and the sixth most populous state in India with 75 million as per the 2011 census. The state was ranked sixth among the states in India according to th...

by S.Irudaya Rajan | On 06 Sep 2017

Culture and Food Security

This paper reviews available cross-disciplinary evidence on how culture affects food security. We discuss the impact of culture on all four dimensions (availability, access and choice, utilization, a...

by Elena Briones Alonso | On 31 Aug 2017

How Inequality Hurts Growth: Revisiting the Galor‐Zeira Model Through a Korean Case

This paper aims to show that the level of inequality increases via the human capital channel with credit market imperfections generating negative effects on economic growth. We expand the model presen...

by Bogang Jun | On 28 Aug 2017

Development of Backward Areas- Outcome of the interventions so far

This paper by Centad looks at the initiatives and their outcome through the construction of an Improvement Index and suggests a relook.

by S Jagadeesan | On 25 Aug 2017

Gandhian Economic Thought and Modern Economic Development

The report says that a fresh wave of globalisation since the early 1990s has created both hope and despair.

by Sudarshan Iyengar | On 23 Aug 2017

Extreme Heat And Migration

The impacts of climate change on global temperatures profoundly affect people’s ability to sustain their livelihoods as well as their health; both of these dimensions in turn influence the migration o...

by International Organisation for Migration | On 18 Aug 2017

Human Development Report 2016 - Human Development for Everyone

The Report explores who has been left out in the progress in human development and why.

by Selim Jahan | On 16 Aug 2017

Local government in South Africa: Can the objectives of the developmental state be achieved through the current model of decentralised governance?

This study examines the notions of decentralisation and developmentalism, and shows how they have become two of the most significant defining features of South African local government.

by Andrew Siddle | On 11 Aug 2017

Making Rapid Strides Agriculture in Madhya Pradesh: Sources, Drivers, and Policy Lessons

This paper study the composition, sources and drivers of agricultural growth in Madhya Pradesh to identify the factors that have contributed to robust agricultural growth in the state and discuss the...

by Ashok Gulati | On 11 Aug 2017

An Approach to Forest and Conservation Policy in Southeast Asia

Forest and conservation policy in Southeast Asia is now at yet another crossroads. Despite decades of efforts, the challenges ahead remain formidable. These challenges include: (i) continued deforesta...

by Gary Bull | On 08 Aug 2017

Corporate Leverage in EMEs: Has the Global Financial Crisis Changed the Determinants?

Has the global financial crisis changed the pivotal determinants of corporate leverage in EMEs? This paper attempts to address this issue using a panel-GMM framework and quantile-analysis for 10 maj...

by Snehal S. Herwadkar | On 04 Aug 2017

Jati, Local Public Goods and Village Governance: Private Actions and Public Outcomes

This paper purports to understand whether voting along narrow parochial lines in socially and ethnically fragmented societies has measurable gains. Using data from rural India, we establish that ident...

by Raghbendra Jha | On 31 Jul 2017

Technology Options for the Sanitation Value Chain

The compendium details the characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of the different technology options, and also describes the different types of systems formed as a combination of the technolog...

by Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy CSTEP | On 28 Jul 2017

Sanitation Tool Compendium

This document provides a list of sanitation tools; organisation of the same based on their specific features; and factsheets corresponding to every tool, which cover the objectives, descriptions, ad...

by Shramana Dey | On 27 Jul 2017

Aid for Trade in Asia and the Pacific: Thinking Forward About Trade Costs and the Digital Economy

This report takes stock of how AfT has contributed to these trends and considers some constructive ways to move forward, to continue to address trade costs in Asia and the Pacific.

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 17 Jul 2017

Cambodia: Addressing the Skills Gap

The report says that Cambodia’s growth in the last 20 years has been remarkable and the lives of its people have improved substantially. But low-cost labor advantages on a narrow economic base have dr...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 30 Jun 2017

Timor-Leste: Development Effectiveness Brief

The report narrates that the related technical assistance has focused on infrastructure management, financial and private sector development, preparations for regional economic integration, and region...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 23 Jun 2017

Integrated Information and Communication Technology Strategies for Competitive Higher Education in Asia and the Pacific

The report narrates that early adoption of information and communication technology can allow developing countries in Asia and the Pacific to move from labor-intensive, natural resources-based to know...

by Jouko Sarvi | On 22 Jun 2017

Achieving Skill Mobility in the ASEAN Economic Community: Challenges, Opportunities, and Policy Implications

This report examines the challenges ASEAN member states face in achieving the goal of greater mobility for the highly skilled, including hurdles in recognizing professional qualifications, opening up...

by Demetrios G. Papademetriou | On 16 Jun 2017

Trade and Transport Facilitation Monitoring Mechanism: Baseline Study in Bangladesh

This report reviews trade and transport procedures in Bangladesh, highlights the importance of monitoring trade and transport facilitation, and lays a foundation for future studies and establishment o...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 12 Jun 2017

Myanmar Transport Sector Policy Note: How to Reform Transport Institutions

Myanmar's transport sector institutions are currently ill adapted to the new situation. Although government reform attempts have been in the right direction, more is needed to shape a strong basis for...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 02 Jun 2017

Climate Change and Variability What are the Risks for Nutrition, Diets, and Food Systems?

The paper uses a food systems approach to analyze the bidirectional relationships between climate change and food and nutrition along the entire food value chain. It then identifies adaptation and mit...

by Jessica Fanzo | On 30 May 2017

Bangladesh: Consolidating Export-led Growth - Country Diagnostic Study

This study argues that some of the policies that allowed Bangladesh to prosper in the last few years will become less effective, and the economy will need to “switch gears” to consolidate the growth m...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 23 May 2017

The Railway Refugees: Sealdah, 1950s -1960s

This paper provides a micro-history of Sealdah Station as a halt of the refugee population coming from East Pakistan in the 1950s and ‘60s. The station as a site of refugee concentration was very diff...

by Anwesha Sengupta | On 19 May 2017

Asian Economic Integration Report 2016

The reports notes the regional cooperation and integration (RCI) in Asia and the Pacific continues to evolve, creating an important source for the region’s dynamic growth. This report assesses the RCI...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 10 May 2017

Compliance in Letter and Compliance in Spirit? - Evidence from Board and Audit Committee Meetings in India

This paper analyzes two notions of compliance, 'compliance in letter' and 'compliance in spirit', using data on Board and Audit Committee meetings from India under its Clause 49 corporate governance ...

by Subrata Sarkar | On 03 May 2017

Towards a Better Future for Women and Work: Voices of Women and Men

Decent work, the core mandate of the ILO, is defined as productive work for women and men in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.Decent work involves opportunities for work that:...

by International Labour Organization [ILO] | On 17 Apr 2017

Lack of Toilets and Violence against Indian Women: Empirical Evidence and Policy Implications

It is now well-accepted among policy makers that the provision of water, sanitation and hygiene is a basic human right. Yet, millions of people lack access to basic toilet facilities, which anecdotal...

by | On 15 Feb 2017

Educational Inequality in India: An Analysis of Gender Differences in Reading and Mathematics

This paper analyzes gender differences in reading and mathematics among Indian children ages 8-11 using data from the 2005 India Human Development Survey. Employing descriptive statistics and ordered...

by | On 15 Feb 2017

Tackling Sex Discrimination through Pay Equity

Discrimination at work is a violation of a basic human right. Workers may be discriminated against on many different grounds, including their sex, with women being particularly discriminated against w...

by International Labour Organization [ILO] | On 06 Feb 2017

Study of Environment can lead to Human Development

Reveiw of ‘Population, Health and Environment’ Edited by Sayeed Unisa, T.V. Sekher, Chander Shekhar, Abhishek Singh, L.K.Dwivedi and M.R. Pradhan by Rawat Pubslishers.

by Manisha Karne | On 30 Jan 2017

Missing from the Market: Purdah Norm and Women’s Paid Work Participation in Bangladesh

Despite significant improvement in female schooling over the last two decades, only a small proportion of women in South Asia are in wage employment. We revisit this puzzle using a nationally represen...

by | On 24 Jan 2017

Rural - Urban Linkages in South Asia: Contemporary Themes and Policy Directions

The early literature on migrant urban communities emphasized the conditions and employment patterns of squatter residents who have emerged on the urban landscape. Only recently has attention shifted t...

by | On 23 Jan 2017

Global Wind Energy Outlook 2016

The Global Wind Energy Council is pleased to present this 6th edition of the Global Wind Energy Outlook, looking at the future of our industry out to 2020, 2030 and ultimately to 2050. What happens in...

by | On 05 Jan 2017

Solar Energy and Economic Development In India: A Review

Shortage of electricity prompted the countries to give a momentum to renewable energy resources. Renewable energy refers to energy resources that Aries naturally and repeatedly in the environment and...

by | On 04 Jan 2017

The Changing Contours of Inter group Disparities and the Role of Preferential Policies in a Globalizing World: Evidence from India

How persistent are traditional socioeconomic hierarchies in the face of marketization, significant structural shifts in the economy, and increased political representation of lower-ranked groups, and...

by Ashwini Deshpande | On 15 Dec 2016

Burden of Diseases due to Air Pollution in Urban India

Air pollution causes some of the most serious long-term impacts on human health. Unlike other health problems, the diseases caused by air-pollution are likely to affect everyone exposed to polluted...

by Amrita Ghatak | On 25 Nov 2016

Strategies to Tackle the Issue of Black Money in India

Economists and social scientists have shown considerable interest in recent years to measure the gap between the observable economic activity and the actual economic activity. This has led to the conc...

by | On 09 Nov 2016

Valuation of Coastal and Marine Ecosystem Services in India: Macro Assessment

The aim of this study is to value, in monetary units, coastal and marine ecosystem services in India. The reasons for doing so are two–fold: i) the destruction and degradation of coastal ecosystems...

by K. S. Kavi Kumar | On 25 Oct 2016

Shelter From the Storm

While remarkable progress has been achieved during the past decade protecting the health and rights of women and adolescent girls in humanitarian settings, the growth in need has outstripped the growt...

by United Nations Population Fund UNFPA | On 21 Oct 2016

Review: The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values

Review of The Making of International Human Rights: The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values. Human Rights in History Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

by | On 17 Oct 2016

Refugee Compacts: An Initial Framework

This brief outlines a particular iteration of a compact approach that incorporates critical components—such as shared outcomes for refugees, host country ownership and focus on longer-term transition,...

by Cindy Huang | On 10 Oct 2016

Glimpsing the End of Economic History? Unconditional Convergence and the Missing Middle Income Trap

This paper suggests a reinterpretation of global growth—encompassing notions of unconditional convergence and the middle income trap—in the past 50 years through the lens of growth theory. Two modes o...

by Sutirtha Roy | On 10 Oct 2016

Is there a Size-Induced Market Failure in Skills Training?

A skilled and educated workforce can support the competitiveness of enterprises of all sizes. However, smaller firms may face greater challenges in developing human capital. We explore differences b...

by Paul Vandenberg | On 04 Oct 2016

Problems Pertaining Migration of Female Tribal Population: A Demographic Perspective on Their Migratory Patterns and Struggle

Migration is a complex issue which has been a subject of keen interest for many years to sociologists, anthropologists, demographers, economists and political scientists. The migrants who work out of...

by | On 29 Sep 2016

Inter State River Water Disputes in India: A Geographical Analysis

Rivers are life line of the human being. Indian rivers are worshiped as a mother, because she cares the humanity and makes the ways easy for the people and living organism. Without the water no one ca...

by | On 20 Sep 2016

The Effects of Climate Change on Public Health and the Healthcare Provider 's Role in Addressing Climate Change

Climate change is a term that refers to major changes in temperature, rainfall, snow, or wind patterns lasting for decades or longer. Both human-made and natural factors contribute to climate change”...

by | On 14 Sep 2016

Scenario Of Climate Change and Human Health in India

The article review the issues related to climate change and its adverse impact on human health in India. Evidences shows that in India climate change has caused threat to public health from extreme we...

by Varsha Chorsiya | On 12 Sep 2016

Climate Change & Infectious Diseases in India: Implications for Health Care Providers

Climate change has the potential to influence the earth’s biological systems, however, its effects on human health are not well defined. Developing nations with limited resources are expected to face...

by | On 12 Sep 2016

Water for Food: Innovative Water Management Technologies for Food Security and Poverty Alleviation

This paper sets out the water and food security challenges in Least Development Countries (LDCs) and developing countries. The document explores the rainfed-irrigation nexus in different regions of th...

by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UNCTAD | On 12 Sep 2016

Does Government Spending on Social Sector Impacts Growth? An Analysis Across Indian States for the Last Two Decades

This paper attempts to examine the impact of government expenditure in social sector on economic growth at the state level for 15 major states. The study reveals that the share of social sector expend...

by | On 07 Sep 2016

Substance Abuse Treatment Centers and Local Crime

This paper estimates the effects of expanding access to substance-abuse treatment on local crime. It does so using an identification strategy that leverages variation driven by substance-abuse-treatme...

by Samuel Bondurant | On 07 Sep 2016

The MDG Hunger Target and the Contested Visions of Food Security

This paper explores the normative and empirical consequences of the MDG hunger target (1C), to halve the proportion of people who are undernourished, measured by the proportion of children under 5 who...

by | On 06 Sep 2016

The End of Cheap Labour: Are Foreign Investors Leaving China?

China’s government is promoting the shift towards a consumption-based economy since a few years. The explicit goal to significantly raise the percentage of wages in the national household income is in...

by | On 31 Aug 2016

Picking the Winner: Measuring Urban Sustainability in India

This study provides a snapshot of the sustainability of selected Indian cities by employing 57 indicators in four dimensions to develop an overall city sustainability index. In recent years, its comp...

by B.Sudhakara Reddy | On 29 Aug 2016

Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia

One of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also one of the largest exporters of oil, and as such, one of the most influential in the region. Despite this, more...

by | On 25 Aug 2016

The History of Humanitarian Action in East and Southeast Asia: Asian Perspectives

ASEAN assumed different roles in responding to humanitarian crises in Cambodia (in the 1970s) and Myanmar (Cyclone Nargis in 2008). For the Cambodia situation, ASEAN was playing the role of ‘antagonis...

by | On 19 Aug 2016

Diversity in Donorship: The Changing Landscape of Official Humanitarian Aid

The lead agency in India’s assistance strategy is the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). The MEA is directly responsible for assistance to Bhutan, Nepal and Afghanistan, and advises the Department of...

by | On 19 Aug 2016

Public Expenditure, Governance and Human Development: A Case of Madhya Pradesh

This paper examines the link between quality of governance, public expenditure and human development outcomes in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The role of governance is measured in five dimensions: Pol...

by N R Bhanumurthy | On 12 Aug 2016

Myanmar Transport Sector Policy Note: Urban Transport

This note presents a review of Myanmar’s urban transport. It focuses on the country’s main cities, Yangon and Mandalay, where issues are most severe, to also help solve similar problems in secondary c...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 12 Aug 2016

Signing away Sovereignty: How Investment Agreements Threaten Regulation of the Mining Industry in the Philippines

In the last decade, the resource-rich Philippines has bet heavily on the mining industry as a development strategy, an approach that has come under growing scrutiny. With 47 large-scale mines in oper...

by Cecilia Olivet | On 10 Aug 2016

Make in India – Scheme For Transforming India

Make in India is an international marketing strategy, conceptualized by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi on 25 September 2014 to attract investments from businesses around the world and make...

by | On 10 Aug 2016

Global Estimates 2015: People Displaced by Disasters

The time is opportune to ensure the causes and consequences of this urgent issue are better addressed. Policy makers are pushing for concerted progress across humanitarian and sustainable development...

by | On 01 Aug 2016

Informality in South Asia: A Review

Labour markets in South Asia have been characterized as dualistic, with a relatively small, well-protected formal sector and a large unprotected informal sector. Indeed, the formal workforce is very s...

by | On 29 Jul 2016

Finders, Keepers?

Natural resource taxation and investment often exhibit cyclical behaviour, associated with shifts in political power. Why do finders get to keep more of their discoveries in some periods than others?...

by Niko Jaakkola | On 22 Jul 2016

Chinese Returnees and High-tech Sector Outward FDI: The Case of Changzhou

The rapid growth and high levels of internationalization by Chinese firms, raise a natural interest in the study of the factors which have led the notable international presence of Chinese firms. In t...

by Zhao Chen | On 19 Jul 2016

Is “Make in India” Constrained by Indian Labour Market Regulations?

This paper examines whether “Make in India” policies are constrained by over-regulation or under-regulation in the Indian labour market. Specific labour law provisions and the scope of circumventing t...

by Ajeet Mathur | On 18 Jul 2016

Human capital potential of India’s future workforce

This paper discusses India’s demographic dynamics and argues that policymakers have the widest window of opportunity with that segment of population which is poised to enter the workforce between 2030...

by Ali Mehdi | On 14 Jul 2016

Ad(d)venture with Knowledge: Stepping ahead with Intellectual Property Rights

Human society has witnessed adventure with knowledge resulting in scientific understanding of the secrets of nature and converting them into technological innovations resulting in metamorphosis of...

by Prabuddha Ganguli | On 30 Jun 2016

Cyclicality of Social Sector Expenditures: Evidence from Indian States

This paper attempts to study the cyclical behaviour of social sector spending including that on education and health for the 17 non-special category states covering the period 2000-01 to 2012-13. It f...

by | On 30 Jun 2016

Evidence on Policies to Increase the Development Impacts of International Migration

International migration offers individuals and their families the potential to experience immediate and large gains in their incomes, and offers a large number of other positive benefits to the sendin...

by | On 28 Jun 2016

Capabilities and Skills

This paper discusses the relevance of recent research on the economics of human development to the work of the Human Development and Capability Association. The recent economics of human development b...

by James J. Heckman | On 28 Jun 2016

How Successful Are Banking Sector Reforms in Emerging Market Economies? Evidence from Impact of Monetary Policy on Levels and Structures of Firm Debt in India

In this paper investigates the success of banking reforms in India where significant banking reforms have been introduced since 1990s. Using the argument that well functioning credit markets would ref...

by Sumon Kumar Bhaumik | On 27 Jun 2016

The Kalikayatna Approach towards Primary Education: A Study of the Learning Initiative of Prajayatna

This paper attempts to study and evaluate the strengths and limitations of an alternative approach to learning -the Kalikayatna approach -that has been implemented in selected clusters in five distric...

by Jyotsna Jha | On 27 Jun 2016

Factors Determining the Roles Board Members Play in Firms

This paper studies how the directors play an important role in influencing board’s action and its effectiveness. This paper attempts to contribute to the existing literature. In this paper, propositio...

by Chitra Singla | On 27 Jun 2016

The Drought and Humanitarian Crisis in Central and Southwest Asia: A Climate Perspective

A persistent multi-year drought in Central and Southwest Asia has affected close to 60 million people as of November 2001. Chronic political instability in many parts of this region and the recent mil...

by | On 24 Jun 2016

Talent Management Systems in Indian Pharmaceutical Firms: Exploring an Emerging Typology

This study has explored the implementation of talent management process in pharmaceutical industry in India through a case study approach. Data was collected from top management and senior managers in...

by Kirti Sharda | On 24 Jun 2016

Implementing the Right to Education Act 2009: The Real Challenges

This study is based on the fact that the implementation of the Act involves serious financial and governance challenges. Considering that different Indian states are at different stages of development...

by Jyotsna Jha | On 23 Jun 2016

Putting Justice First: Legal Strategies to Combat Human Trafficking in India

The comprehensive research found significant impediments preventing victims of trafficking from using the courts: from the lack of specialised legal assistance, to the absence of protection for those...

by The Thomson Reuters Foundation | On 17 Jun 2016

Income Mobility among Social Groups in Indian Rural Households: Findings from the Indian Human Development Survey

The paper analyses income mobility across different social groups in India using data from the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS) collected in 2004–05 and 2011–12. Indices signifying different n...

by Thiagu Ranganathan | On 16 Jun 2016

Elder Abuse in India

With the traditional system of the lady of the house looking after the older family members at home is slowly getting changed as the women at home are also participating in activities outside home and...

by | On 15 Jun 2016

Inter-Regional Comparisons of Humanitarian Action

Throughout the conference it became clear that there are two emerging trends in humanitarian action across the Asia–Pacific. The first is the increasing activity of selected Asia-Pacific states engage...

by | On 09 Jun 2016

Education Through the Lens of Sustainable Human Development

If human development is defined as a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process aiming to improve the well-being of populations and individuals, then the one element that can serve...

by Gianna Alessandra Sanchez Moretti | On 06 Jun 2016

Righting the Wrong Strengthening Local Humanitarian Leadership to Save Lives and Strengthen Communities

The international humanitarian system—the vast UN-led network in which Oxfam and other international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, and others play key rol...

by Oxfam India | On 02 Jun 2016

The Harvest is in My Blood: Hazardous Child Labor in Tobacco Farming in Indonesia

This report—based on extensive research including interviews with more than 130 children who work on tobacco farms in Indonesia—shows that child workers are being exposed to serious health and safety...

by Human Rights Watch | On 31 May 2016

Surveillance of Chronic Diseases: Challenges and Strategies for India

This paper describes the status, challenges and scope for strengthening surveillance of chronic disease risk factors, morbidities and mortality in India. Surveillance experience of four selected Stat...

by Udaya S. Mishra | On 30 May 2016

IT Vision @ UP 2012

The aim of the IT policy is: 1.To position Uttar Pradesh as the preferred IT/ITES investment destination in India 2. To leverage IT as an engine of growth for UP 3.To transform physical communit...

by Uttar Pradesh Government UP | On 27 May 2016

Aid and Conflict in Afghanistan

This report examines the international community’s assistance to Afghanistan, with particular focus on U.S. efforts. It assesses the impact of the U.S.-devised counter-insurgency strategy on Afghans’...

by International Crisis Group | On 26 May 2016

Women and Conflict in Afghanistan

This report assesses the status of women in present-day Afghanistan, including the gains achieved with international support after the U.S.-led intervention in 2001. It examines gaps and challenges to...

by International Crisis Group | On 26 May 2016

Institutionalising Civilian Control of the Military in New Democracies: Theory and Evidence from South Korea

This paper aims to answer the question of how and under what circumstances civilian control can be established in newly democratised nations. To do this, the paper proposes a new theoretical argument...

by | On 23 May 2016

Women’s Labour Migration from Asia and the Pacific: Opportunities and Challenges

In an era of unprecedented human mobility, migration from and within the Asia-Pacific region has assumed gendered dimensions, with implications for migration flows, trends and patterns. Gender roles,...

by | On 19 May 2016

National Biodiversity Action Plan (NBAP)

The NBAP draws from the principle that National Enviroment Policy (NEP) that human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development and they are entitled to a healthy and productive li...

by Ministry of Environment and Forests GOI | On 18 May 2016

Rainwater Harvesting: A Lifeline for Human Well-Being

This publication highlights the link between rainwater harvesting, ecosystems and human wellbeing and draws the attention of readers to both the negative and positive aspects of using this technology...

by | On 18 May 2016

More Than a Lightbulb: Five Recommendations to Make Modern Energy Access Meaningful for People and Prosperity

"Modern energy access” is finally on the international agenda, but the current common definition of 100 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per capita per year is far too low. To reflect likely demand and historica...

by Todd Moss | On 18 May 2016

The Relevance of Wetland Conservation in Kerala

Kerala has the largest proportion of land area under wetlands among all the states of India, changes to which can significantly affect ecosystem processes. Compared to other states of the country, wet...

by Sheeba Abraham | On 17 May 2016

Advancing the Interests of Bangladesh’s Migrant Workers: Issues of Financial Inclusion and Social Protection

The study is expected to contribute to stimulating debate around the broader issues of safeguarding the interests of migrant workers through financial mainstreaming of their income, raising efficacy o...

by | On 11 May 2016

Issues & Challenges of Air Pollution in Delhi

The mortality due to air pollution is shown in the presentation. The different types and sources of air pollution are explained. The condition of the respiratory system after breathing polluted air is...

by T K Joshi | On 11 May 2016

Air Pollution in Delhi: Air Quality Index - Public Awareness Tool

The air pollution in Delhi is shown and how the air quality index is calculated and the health impacts are shown here.

by J.K. Bassin | On 11 May 2016

Educational Attainment of Young Adults in India: Measures, Trends & Determinants

Given the fact that education of young adults plays crucial role from both economic and social point of view, the objective of the study is to analyse the pattern of improvements in their education an...

by Runu Bhakta | On 02 May 2016

Tacit Collusion and Market Concentration under Network Effects

In an infinitely repeated Cournot game with trigger strategy punishment, we demonstrate that the relationship between market concentration and collusion sustainability depends on the strength of netwo...

by | On 02 May 2016

Intellectual Property Rights: Indian Scenario

Global competitiveness has redefined business strategies worldwide and the focus has certainly shifted to examining how our knowledge resources can reposition our stand in the world market. It means t...

by Sachin Mangal | On 28 Apr 2016

God’s Own Country – Moving Towards Universal Health Coverage in Kerala – Piloting in the Districts of Malappuram and Palakkad

The report ‘God’s Own Country, Moving Towards Universal Health Coverage in Kerala, Piloting in the Districts of Malappuram and Palakkad’, 2016 provides details and in-depth understanding of the Univer...

by Sunil Nandraj | On 21 Apr 2016

Human Security & Food Security

As the international community transitions from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the challenges ahead of Member States is to build on the substanti...

by Food and Agricultural Organization [FAO] | On 12 Apr 2016

State Finances: A Study of Budgets of 2015-16

Empirical findings across a swathe of countries, advanced and emerging, confirm that the composition of government expenditure can have perceptible growth implications.

by Reserve Bank of India RBI | On 12 Apr 2016

Youth in India: Challenges of Employment and Employability

Using the NSSO Employment and Unemployment Survey Rounds as the basis, this paper examines questions of unemployment, employment and human capital formation among Indian youth belonging to various s...

by Rajendra P. Mamgain | On 05 Apr 2016

Human Development in Telangana State: District Profiles

Telangana emerged as the 29th state of the Indian Union from undivided Andhra Pradesh after a prolonged struggle for statehood for nearly six decades. The social structure in Telangana is uniquely sk...

by Center for Economic and Social Studies CESS | On 31 Mar 2016

Mixed-Design Approach in Impact Evaluation: Principles and Practice

There is no single method in impact evaluation that can always address the different aspects better than others. Importance of mixed design approach in impact evaluation studies arises with the need f...

by Navneet Kaur | On 21 Mar 2016

A Case for China’s Security Role in South Asia

The paper focuses on the constructive role that China can play in enhancing security in South Asia. The potential contribution that China can make to enhancing non-traditional security in the region i...

by Ramandeep Kaur | On 21 Mar 2016

Cambodia Diversifying Beyond Garments and Tourism Country Diagnostic Study

The Royal Government of Cambodia is grateful for the timely conduct of the study. The ideas and findings in this report will certainly be useful in providing inputs to support and operationalize the R...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 18 Mar 2016

Maldives Overcoming the Challenges of a Small Island State Country Diagnostic Study

This report identifies four critical constraints to inclusive growth in the Maldives: (1) inadequate and poor quality maritime infrastructure that constrains connectivity, limits provision of basic go...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 17 Mar 2016

R & D Sector Outsourcing, Human Capital Formation and Growth in the Context of Developed versus Developing Economies

This paper theoretically examines the impact of R & D outsourcing from an economy which is in the innovation-only regime to an economy which is in the imitation-innovation regime. It shows that depend...

by Sujata Basu | On 15 Mar 2016

Cross-Country Analysis of Composition of Human Capital and Total Factor Productivity Growth depending on its Distance to Frontier

This paper empirically examines human capital’s contribution to economy-wide technological progress and also on technical efficiency gain depending on its distance to frontier in a panel of 75 countri...

by Sujata Basu | On 15 Mar 2016

Intergenerational Mobility, Human Capital Composition and Distance to Technological Frontier

The focus of this study is to analyze the relation between intergenerational mobility (upward and downward mobility) and wage inequality (between skilled and unskilled workers) in a dynamic endogenous...

by Sujata Basu | On 15 Mar 2016

Innovative Strategies in Technical and Vocational Education and Training for Accelerated Human Resource Development in South Asia Bangladesh

Improving the quality of skills among its labor force will help further economic growth in Bangladesh. Thus, there is an urgent need to provide better access to TVET to help increase productivity and...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 15 Mar 2016

North Korean Economic Reform: New Changes or Old, Empty Promises?

In June, North Korean authorities announced agricultural reforms called the “6.28 policy,” which promises to recalculate the ratio of distributed planned products (70 percent to the country, 30 percen...

by | On 14 Mar 2016

The Methodology of Polanyi's Great Transformation

The goal in this article is to articulate the methodology used in this book to bring out the several dimensions on which it differs from current approaches to social science. Among the key differences...

by Asad Zaman | On 14 Mar 2016

Rethinking National Security: China's New Security Commission

The newly established Central National Security Commission (CNSC) of China held its first meeting on April 15. The inaugural meeting of this body marks a significant milestone in the reorganization of...

by | On 12 Mar 2016

People's or Party's Army in Vietnam?

While the Vietnam Communist Party’s grip over the army remains strong, Zachary Abuza examines the growing calls challenging the Vietnam People’s Army’s duty to defend the ruling party over national in...

by | On 11 Mar 2016

Human Rights in North Korea: Pressure and Engagement

Over a year since its report was published, what are the implications and limitations of the UN Commission of Inquiry’s investigation into human rights violations in North Korea, and what is the best...

by | On 10 Mar 2016

Consumer’s Acceptance towards Genetically Modified Crops and Growth of the Economy: A Theoretical Approach

This paper develops a three-sector theoretical growth model to capture the role of consumers’ acceptance towards the second generation of genetically modified (GM) crops in the long run growth process...

by Arpita Ghose | On 10 Mar 2016

Institutional Change in Market-Liberal State Capitalism: An Integrative Perspective on the Development of the Private Business Sector in China

This paper shows that a more accurate depiction of the development of China’s private sector is gained by considering the complex interaction between bottom-up and top- down processes. First, the pape...

by | On 09 Mar 2016

Imagined Futures:Fictionality in Economic Action

Starting from the assumption that decision situations in economic contexts are characterized by fundamental uncertainty, the paper argues that the decision-making of intentionally rational actors is a...

by Jens Beckert | On 09 Mar 2016

Top Incomes and Human Well-Being Around the World

The share of income held by the top 1 percent in many countries around the world has been rising persistently over the last 30 years. But we continue to know little about how the rising top income sha...

by Richard V. Burkhauser | On 09 Mar 2016

Models of Affective Decision-making: How do Feelings Predict Choice?

Intuitively, how we feel about potential outcomes will determine our decisions. Indeed, one of the most influential theories in psychology, Prospect Theory, implicitly assumes that feelings govern cho...

by Caroline J. Charpentier | On 09 Mar 2016

India's Policy on Genetically Modified Crops

Agricultural biotechnology is highly contested site in India, encompassing debates on impact of technology on society, economic development, and India’s future agricultural Strategy. Proponents of b...

by Anitha Ramanna | On 09 Mar 2016

Class Gains in Fisheries Management in India: Reflections from Two States

The debate on common property resource centres on issues of a particular strategy for managing it in order to cater to the growing demand for communities that depend on it and the economy at large tha...

by Jharna Pathak | On 09 Mar 2016

The Many Faces Of Migrants : Exploring the Nexus of Migration and Human Security

Against the backdrop of the changing global demographic trends, this edition highlights issues which mitigate migration as a viable strategy to cope with threats to human welfare and dignity. It does...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 06 Mar 2016

Chartering ASEAN Human Rights

Human rights issues within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations pose a significant challenge as it seeks to remain relevant in an increasingly interconnected global system. On 20 July 2009, ASEA...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 05 Mar 2016

Disaster Preparedness in Southeast Asia

In the final quarter of 2009, Southeast Asia witnessed a number of disaster that affected sevevral countries in the region, attesting to the levels of national preparedness in dealing with disasters....

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 05 Mar 2016

Mega¬ Sporting Events Fuelling Human Trafficking?

The upcoming 2010 FIFA World Cup scheduled to take place in South Africa between 11 June and 11 July 2010 has once again raised concerns over the possibility of human trafficking. A study by the Human...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 05 Mar 2016

Transnational Organised Crime In Southeast Asia: Threat Assessment

Transnational organised crime is considered one of the major threats to human security, impeding the social, economic, political and cultural development of societies. Much attention has been given...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 04 Mar 2016

Responding to Transnational Organised Crime: Case Study of Human Trafficking and Drug Trafficking

Human trafficking and illicit drug trafficking are arguably the most intractable of all transnational crimes. They are an issue of both domestic and foreign policy concern and a subject of longstandin...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 04 Mar 2016

Landmark Verdict by The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

On 26 July 2010, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) delivered its first verdict against a former official of the Khmer Rouge regime, KaingGuekEav (also known as ‘Duch’). The E...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 04 Mar 2016

Asia Flooded with Disasters

The past month has witnessed several major environmental disasters in Asia. Of particular significance are the Pakistan floods, which have engulfed a fifth of Pakistan’s total land area and affected 2...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 04 Mar 2016

Advancing Protection Of Civilians Through The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission On Human Rights(AICHR)

In the first issue of this month’s NTS Alert, the importance of a robust human rights framework to complement international humanitarian law, and address its shortcomings in protecting civilians caugh...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 03 Mar 2016

Critical Reflections on Anti¬-Human Trafficking: The Case of Timor¬Leste

Human trafficking is commonly seen as a heinous crime affecting millions of migrants from all parts of the globe. The struggle against this phenomenon is perceived as noble, moral and necessary. Howev...

by | On 03 Mar 2016

Food and Health in the Asia-Pacific: The Economics of Access and its Implications for Health

This is the first of a two-part NTS Alert series that will explore the intersection between food security and health issues in the Asia-Pacific. This NTS Alert focuses on health problems stemming from...

by J. Ewing | On 03 Mar 2016

Economic and Environmental Impacts of Harmful Non-Indigenous Species in Southeast Asia

Harmful non-indigenous species (NIS) impose great economic and environmental impacts globally, but little is known about their impacts in Southeast Asia. Lack of knowledge of the magnitude of the pro...

by Le T. P Nghiem | On 03 Mar 2016

The Implications of the US Anti-human Trafficking Strategy for National Policies: The Case of Malaysia

This NTS Alert discusses the protection gaps in national anti-human trafficking policies perpetuated by the dominant influence of the US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Reports. Using Malaysia as a case...

by Manpavan Kaur | On 02 Mar 2016

Economic and Political Relations Between Bhutan and Neighbouring Countries

The diversification of Bhutan’s relations began with its entry into the United Nations in 1971, and while external relations continued to be largely confined to India, the establishment of its relatio...

by | On 02 Mar 2016

Trafficking In Persons: Singapore’s Evolving Responses

For a long time, sending countries have been the focus of efforts to combat trafficking in persons (TIP). However, in recent years, destination countries such as Singapore have also stepped up their e...

by Pau Hangzo | On 01 Mar 2016

Cultivated Land Conversion in China and the Potential for Food Security and Sustainability

With over a billion people in China, the issue of cultivated land conversion is extremely important both in terms of food security and environmental sustainability. This paper investigates the relatio...

by Shunji Cui | On 01 Mar 2016

Economy for Life in our Earth community

This living document is a result of an extensive process led by the Social Movements for an Alternative Asia (SMAA), GerakLawan, La ViaCampesina and the supporters of the EndWTO Campaign.

by Focus on the Global South FGS | On 29 Feb 2016

Agricultural investments in Southeast Asia: Legal tools forpublic accountability

In Southeast Asia, the rise in agricultural investments takes place against the backdrop of a fast-evolving regional context. In this ‘Asian Century’, trade and investment flows are flourishing across...

by Shalmali Guttal | On 29 Feb 2016

Conditional Cash Transfer Programs: An Effective Tool for Poverty Alleviation?

The paper highlights a number of issues that countries need to explore in assessing the feasibility of a CCT program: a country needs to assess the current level of specific human capital outcomes and...

by Hyun H. Son | On 29 Feb 2016

On the Skill of Balancing While Riding a Bicycle

Humans have ridden bicycles for over 200 years, yet there are no continuous measures of how skill differs between novice and expert. To address this knowledge gap, the dynamics of human bicycle riding...

by | On 29 Feb 2016

20 Years of Human Security: A special focus on food security

This year is the 20th anniversary of the release of the 1994 United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report, which defined the concept of human security and brought it to int...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 27 Feb 2016

20 Years of Human Security: A Special Focus on Environmental Security

This year is the 20th anniversary of the release of the 1994 United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report, which defined the concept of human security and brought it to int...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 27 Feb 2016

20 Years of Human Security: A Special Focus on Community Security

This year is the 20th anniversary of the release of the 1994 United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report, which defined the concept of human security and brought it to int...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 27 Feb 2016

20 Years of Human Security: A Special Focus on Political Security

Security used to be defined in military terms with the state as the referent of security. From this state-centric lens, political security means the stability of the state’s political regime and socia...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 27 Feb 2016

New Issues in Human Security: Energy-Climate-Water-Food Nexus

Today, millions of people experience insecurity as a result of new and complex issues threatening human welfare and dignity, such as climate change and the contested or inefficient use of energy and w...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 27 Feb 2016

2015: A Year for Reflection

2015 is a critical year for global and regional institutions, and for the international community as a whole, as it represents a milestone in the big push for achieving global goals of peace, human se...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 27 Feb 2016

Women in Southeast Asia: From Equality to Development

2015 marks the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September 1995. While the world takes stock of how far we have come in terms of acknowledging women’s righ...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 27 Feb 2016

COP 21: Diplomatic Milestone or Half Measure?

Year 2015 ended with scenes of congratulatory jubilation in Paris. The world had for once come together to deliver what is now referred to as the Paris Agreement at the end of the 21st United Nations...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 27 Feb 2016

Money, Output and Prices in India

The dynamics of the monetary system is undergoing significant changes in India. The entire concept and flow of money; narrow, broad or base, is being influenced by measures related to financial inclus...

by Charan Singh | On 27 Feb 2016

Understanding the Response of Indian Banks to Macroeconomic Shocks: A Strategy Perspective

The vulnerability of banks to macroeconomic and financial shocks is an area of growing interest to policymakers, especially in emerging markets. Strong adverse aggregate shocks contribute heavily to l...

by Rohit Gupta | On 27 Feb 2016

A Model of Gender Inequality and Economic Growth

This paper introduces a model of gender inequality and economic growth that focuses on the determination of women’s time allocation among market production, home production, child rearing, and child e...

by Jinyoung Kim | On 27 Feb 2016

Building a Regional Disaster Response Mechanism for a Secure ASEAN Community

A series of recent humanitarian crises in Southeast Asia have signalled a new impetus to re- think the nature of security cooperation in the region. The outbreak of pandemics, the devastating impact o...

by Melly Caballero-Anthony | On 26 Feb 2016

Recalibrating the ASEAN Security Community

Against the recent conflicts and crises facing the region, the spotlight is once again directed at ASEAN’s plans for an ASEAN Security Community (ASC). What is significant in this slew of crises that...

by Mely Caballero-Anthony | On 26 Feb 2016

Is Nuclear Energy a Viable Option for All?

The prospect of nuclear energy as an alternative to traditional fossil fuels has increased sharply due to soaring oil prices. This has been further boosted by the challenge of global climate change. D...

by | On 26 Feb 2016

Prospects for an ASEAN Nuclear Cooperation: A Common Nuclear Facility?

Nuclear energy has emerged as a viable option to provide base load power for many nations. However, countries in Southeast Asia planning to develop nuclear reactors could face a multitude of problems....

by | On 26 Feb 2016

The Myanmar Nargis Aftermath: A Disaster in Governance

Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, which made headline news across the globe, triggered denunciations of the military regime in delaying the international humanitarian relief efforts. The cyclone-struck count...

by | On 26 Feb 2016

Measuring HDI – The Old, the New and the Elegant: Implications for multidimensional development and social inclusiveness

The Human Development Index (HDI) is calculated using normalized indicators from three dimensions- health, education, and standard of living (or income). This paper evaluates three aggregation methods...

by Srijit Mishra | On 26 Feb 2016

Local Property Taxation and Benefits in Developing Countries - Overcoming political resistance?

While property taxation has existed since ancient times, and the taxation of land has been a mainstay of public finances through the Middle Ages, in both Europe and Asia, it has all but ceased to be a...

by Ehtisham Ahmad | On 26 Feb 2016

Gossip and the Efficiency of Interactions

Human communication in organizations often involves a large amount of gossiping about others. Here we study in an experiment whether gossip affects the efficiency of human interactions. We let subject...

by | On 26 Feb 2016

Accra Conference on Aid Effectiveness Perspectives from Bangladesh

The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), established in 1993, is a civil society initiative to promote an ongoing dialogue between the principal partners in the decision-making and implementing process....

by Dialogue Centre for Policy | On 25 Feb 2016

ICC’s Verdict on Darfur: Whose Responsibility?

The International Criminal Court’s unprecedented ruling to arrest the Sudanese president for crimes against humanity is a step further in advancing the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)....

by | On 25 Feb 2016

Resolving Internal Conflict in Myanmar: A Human Security Approach

National security in Myanmar has always been equated with state security by the ruling military junta. However, the drive to protect the state has led to insecurities for its people. This paper argues...

by | On 25 Feb 2016

The Economic Crisis and Labour Migrants: A Test for Human Security?

As the current global economic crisis deepens, labour migrants have begun to experience the consequences of both political and economic insecurity. How effective are legal frameworks in protecting the...

by | On 25 Feb 2016

Responding to Non-Traditional Security Challenges in Asia

Emerging security challenges in Asia are compelling the international community to take a hard look at their causes and implications on state and human security. Given the growing complexity of these...

by Mely Caballero-Anthony | On 25 Feb 2016

Exploring Priority Areas for Philippine APEC 2015 Hosting: Building Inclusive Economies, Building a Better World

This paper is an integration of the studies commissioned under the DFA-PIDS memorandum of agreement to explore the priority areas during the Philippines' APEC hosting in 2015 under the theme: "Buildin...

by Erlinda M. Medalla | On 25 Feb 2016

Challenges in Health Services Trade: Philippine Case

There is a growing emphasis on the role of trade in health services (telehealth, health tourism and retirement, investments and deployment of medical professionals) in easing fiscal constraints, gener...

by Maria Cherry Rodolfo | On 25 Feb 2016

The US and Myanmar: Moving into a New Phase

At the recent United Nations general debate, US President Barack Obama outlined his vision for US foreign policy, making a clear break with the previous administration. The shift has significant impli...

by | On 24 Feb 2016

The AICHR Framework for Action

On 23 October 2009, ASEAN formally launched the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights at the 15th ASEAN Summit in Thailand. The ASEAN leaders also announced the ‘Cha-am Hua Hin Declaratio...

by | On 24 Feb 2016

From Aceh to Chile: Is ASEAN Prepared for Another Disaster?

The latest natural disaster in Chile, like the one in Haiti, comes as yet another test of Southeast Asia’s readiness in global humanitarian relief — five years after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. How...

by | On 24 Feb 2016

Impact of Management Practices on Employee Effectiveness in South Asia

South Asian organizations in countries like Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are trying to professionalize management practices in recent years. Inspite of such efforts, employees indiscipli...

by Zafar Qureshi | On 24 Feb 2016

Scaling Up Carbon Finance in India

India’s performance in the early carbon market are analysed, and proposes a series of actions to be undertaken by both the Government of India, and the private sector, if India is to take full advanta...

by World Bank | On 24 Feb 2016

India’s Fifth National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity 2014

The country's biodiversity faces a variety of threats, ranging from land use changes in natural habitats to overexploitation of natural resources, proliferation of invasive species and climate change....

by Ministry of Environment and Forest | On 24 Feb 2016

Rising Food Prices and Food Security: Impact of the 2008 Food Crisis on Asia

The trend of rising food prices has made this basic human need inaccessible to an increasing number of people. The impact on vulnerable groups, especially the poor, is immense. Food price rise has imp...

by | On 23 Feb 2016

Pakistan’s Flood Disaster: An Unprecedented Humanitarian Crisis

The recent monsoon-related floods have wreaked havoc in Pakistan. Decades of development outcomes have been wiped out and critical human security challenges have been precipitated. It is critical to b...

by | On 23 Feb 2016

Report on “Climate Change, Migration and Human Security in Southeast Asia”

The Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), organised a study-group meeting to address the topic of ‘Climate Change, Migration an...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 22 Feb 2016

Recent Monetary Policy Statement of   Bangladesh Bank (July 2009)

The Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), established in 1993, is a civil society initiative to promote an ongoing dialogue between the principal partners in the decision-making and implementing process....

by Debapriya Bhattacharya | On 22 Feb 2016

‘Mind the Gap’: Reducing Waste and Losses in the Food Supply Chain

One oft-neglected strategy to improve food availability is the simple act of reducing waste. Inefficiencies across the entire food supply chain – from ‘farm to fork’ – result in significant food losse...

by | On 22 Feb 2016

Early Lessons from the Process to Enhance Understanding of Loss and Damage in Bangladesh

This document is the culmination of a process that unfolded over two years in Bangladesh, which benefitted from contributions from individuals and organisations too numerous to mention by name here. H...

by Erin Roberts | On 21 Feb 2016

Asian Monetary Integration: A Japanese Perspective

This paper discusses Japan’s strategy for Asian monetary integration. It argues that Japan faces three major policy challenges when promoting intraregional exchange rate stability. First, there must b...

by Masahiro Kawai | On 21 Feb 2016

Roadmap for the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) in Asia: Personalities, Institutions and Processes

It is over six years since the 2005 UN World Summit endorsed the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), thus recognising an individual state’s responsibility to protect its citizens from four mass atrociti...

by | On 20 Feb 2016

Climate Change, Migration and Human Security in Southeast Asia

The proposition that migration as a result of climate change has consequences for regional and global security has become prominent in public discourse over the last few years. Yet much of that debate...

by | On 19 Feb 2016

Report on “Policy Roundtable on Asian Non-Traditional Security”

This report presents the proceedings of a Policy Roundtable on Asian Non-Traditional Security held in Beijing on 30-31 July 2012. Attended by academics and policymakers from across the region, the Rou...

by S. Rajaratnam International Studies | On 19 Feb 2016

Plight of the Rohingya: ASEAN Credibility Again at Stake

The suffering of the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine state is putting pressure on ASEAN to intervene. Coming just before their 21st Summit, the wisdom and stewardship of ASEAN leaders will be tested onc...

by | On 19 Feb 2016

From Agropolis to Ecopolis – Heading Towards Regenerative Cities

In this lecture, Stefan Schurig (World Future Council) talks about the vision of regenerative cities as the greening of the urban environment and the protection of nature from urban expansion, and abo...

by Stefan Schurig | On 19 Feb 2016

The Notion Of Prosperity

Mohamed Halfani (UN-Habitat) outlines the notion of prosperity as it relates to the work of UN-Habitat. This introduction to the theme of urban prosperity highlights the disjuncture between current de...

by | On 19 Feb 2016

Impact of Services Trade Liberalization on Employment and People Movement in South Asia

Services have been a key driver of overall economic growth in South Asia since the 1990s. This paper examines how the growth of services output, trade and investment have affected service sector emplo...

by Rupa Chanda | On 19 Feb 2016

Street-led city-wide slum upgrading

This lecture proposes a fundamental shift in addressing the problems of slums, and suggests an approach that focuses on streets as the engine for urban transformation. The strategy brought forward by...

by | On 19 Feb 2016

Impact Of Trade Liberalisation On Employment In Bangladesh

The present study has examined the changes in the employment scenario of Bangladesh following the pursuance of the trade liberalisation strategy and the possible effects of further trade liberalisatio...

by Wasel Shadat | On 19 Feb 2016

Discourse on Kashmir: From Territoriality to ‘Enlightened Sovereignty’

The author calls for renewed focus on the idea of ‘soft borders’ between India and Pakistan, with particular reference to Jammu and Kashmir, in the light of a theory of ‘enlightened sovereignty’ that...

by | On 19 Feb 2016

Urban Economy in the New Millennium

Michael Cohen in this lecture illustrates data about economic growth that demonstrate how cities act as engines of national economic development. In 2008, for the first time in human history, half the...

by | On 19 Feb 2016

Adaptation to Climate Change in India: A Study of Union Budgets

The present study reviews the framework on adaptation in India and provides an estimation of the public resources devoted to this sector.

by Kaushik Ganguly | On 18 Feb 2016

New Avenues for Regional Cooperation: Tackling Human Trafficking in Asia

In Southeast Asia, rising population and technological advances mean that unfortunately human traffickers have a growing target base online and are making greater use of technology. Nevertheless, crea...

by | On 17 Feb 2016

Demographic Dividend or Demographic Threat in Pakistan

This paper looks into the demographic dividend available to Pakistan and its implications for the country, mainly through three mechanisms: labour supply, savings, and human capital. For economic bene...

by Durr-e- Nayab | On 17 Feb 2016

Something in the Air? Pollution, Allergens and Children’s Cognitive Functioning

Poor air quality has been shown to harm the health and development of children. Research on these relationships has focused almost exclusively on the effects of human-made pollutants, and has not full...

by Dave Marcotte | On 17 Feb 2016

Methods for Identifying Low Emissions Development Options for Agriculture

Low emissions development strategies (LEDS) are national economic and social development plans that promote sustainable development while reducing GHG emissions. While LEDS programs have helped to mai...

by Sonja Vermeulen | On 17 Feb 2016

Indonesia’s Foreign Domestic Workers: Dilemma of Not Working Overseas

While the United Nations takes stock of how far women have come in getting women’s rights acknowledged as human rights, Indonesia wants to stop sending women out of the country as foreign domestic wor...

by | On 16 Feb 2016

ASEAN’s Haze Shroud: Grave Threat to Human Security

Transboundary haze pollution is posing significant multiple risks to the well-being and security of people in ASEAN. Beyond looking at it as an environmental issue, it is a severe threat to human secu...

by | On 16 Feb 2016

Women, Peace and Security: Impact of UNSCR 1325 on Indo-Pacific

On the 15th anniversary of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, how far have countries in the Indo-Pacific region come to implement its peace and security agenda?

by | On 16 Feb 2016

COP 21 and the Paris Agreement: Achievement or Half Measure?

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change hailed as the first truly universal and unanimous agreement on climate was celebrated as progress in humanity’s collective fight against climate change. But what...

by | On 16 Feb 2016

Why Civil Service Reforms Do Not Work

(Public Sector Reforms) PSR must be based on the recognition that people are at the heart of public service. As a result, managing human resources must be at the centre of any effort. The people who...

by Nadeem Ul Haque | On 16 Feb 2016

Use of National Currencies for Trade Settlement in East Asia: A Proposal

This paper develops a multilateral currency system where national currencies are used for trade settlement in East Asia, comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries,...

by ll Houng Lee | On 16 Feb 2016

Financial Inclusion, Financial Education, and Financial Regulation: A Story from Indonesia

Many reforms have taken place in Indonesia following the Asian financial crisis of 1997– 1998. The government has embarked upon institutional transformation, making the country one of the region’s mos...

by Georg Inderst | On 16 Feb 2016

Stock Market Reaction to Catastrophic Shock: Evidence from Listed Pakistani Firms

This study examines the effect of the earthquake of October 8, 2005 on the price behaviour and activities of Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE). Sixty firms are selected from those listed on Karachi Stock E...

by Attiya Y. Javid | On 15 Feb 2016

Notes on the Monetary Policy Strategy of the Bangladesh Bank

This document is designed to present a brief but comprehensive view of the real and monetary developments during the immediate past quarters and project the expected developments in the immediate futu...

by Bangladesh Bank BB | On 15 Feb 2016

Income, Public Social Services, and Capability Development: A Cross-district Analysis of Pakistan

Is household income enough for human development or should government direct resources towards the provision of social services to improve capabilities of individuals? The former is emphasised by the...

by Rizwana Siddiqui | On 14 Feb 2016

Maximizing Chances for Success in Afghanistan and Pakistan

The following is a Campaign 2012 policy brief by Bruce Riedel and Michael O’Hanlon proposing ideas for the next president on America’s foreign policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. Vanda Felbab-Brow...

by Bruce Riedel | On 14 Feb 2016

The Afghanistan–Pakistan Challenge: Meeting Humanitarian Needs

For Campaign 2012, Bruce Riedel and Michael O’Hanlon wrote a policy brief proposing ideas for the next president on America’s foreign policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. The following paper is a r...

by Elizabeth Ferris | On 14 Feb 2016

Mitigating the Costs of Corruption in Water for the Poor

The water crisis, exacerbated by corruption, is exacting a high human toll on the lives of the poor and vulnerable. Corruption makes water undrinkable, inaccessible and unaffordable. In developing cou...

by Transparency International TI | On 14 Feb 2016

Afghanistan’s Displaced People: 2014 and Beyond

Afghanistan is the largest refugee repatriation operation in the world. More than 5.7 million people have returned in the last ten years, representing nearly a quarter of the current population of 28...

by Aidan O'Leary | On 14 Feb 2016

Calibrating Law Enforcement and Its Purpose

In “Calibrating Law Enforcement and Its Purpose,” published by Addiction on November 10, 2014, Vanda Felbab-Brown comments on Harold Pollack and Peter Reuter’s article “Does tougher enforcement make d...

by Vanda Felbab-Brown | On 14 Feb 2016

Special Cell for Women and Children: The Spirit and Strategies to Meet the Challenges

The aim of the present endeavour is to highlight these commonalities in the nature of the work and individual functioning and thereby adhere to the team spirit and democratic principles of the Special...

by Tata Institue of Social Sciences TISS | On 14 Feb 2016

A Strategy of the Special Cell

The primary objective of this study is to understand if the strategy which was developed by and for the violated woman, is at all detrimental to her and her access to rights.

by Anjali Dave | On 14 Feb 2016

Reforming Institutions: Where to Begin?

The theories of institutional evolution put forth by Douglas North, Darron Acemoglu and Dani Rodrik and the historical experiences of different countries in the context of development (or non-developm...

by M. Idrees Khawaja | On 14 Feb 2016

Human Capital vs. Physical Capital: A Cross-Country Analysis of Human Development Strategies

This study estimates a small simultaneous equation model using panel data from sixty-four countries for the years 1996 and 2004. The model is estimated by various techniques—OLS, TSLS, dummy variable...

by Rizwana Siddiqui | On 14 Feb 2016

Living Arrangement: How does it relate to the Health of the Elderly in India?

India has the second largest population of elderly people after China. The living arrangement of the elderly is seen as a parameter of great importance in understanding their plight in developing coun...

by Mitali Sen | On 14 Feb 2016

Private Schooling in India: A New Educational Landscape

Private schooling in India has expanded rapidly in the past decade. However, few studies have looked at its implications for educational quality. Using data from the recently collected India Human Dev...

by Sonalde Desai | On 14 Feb 2016

Disempowered by Whom? Gender vs. Generation in Family Decision making

The now-frequent use of decision-making questions in household surveys has greatly enhanced our understanding of intra-household power relations. While much of the research interest in these questions...

by Mitali Sen | On 13 Feb 2016

Utilization of Maternal Health Care Services in India: Understanding the Regional Differences

There is great regional variation on utilization of maternal health care services across India. While regional differences have long been established, why women in some states are more likely to utili...

by Sonalde Desai | On 12 Feb 2016

Beyond Geography: Unlocking Human Potential

This Report focuses on the productive abilities of the regions, households and individuals. The report also reinforces the fact that there are inequalities between and within regions, as well as soci...

by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) | On 12 Feb 2016

Corruption and Human Trafficking

Human trafficking is thought to affect more than 12 million victims around the world. Corruption is seen as facilitating this flow of people and feeding the impunity that prevents the prosecution of t...

by Transparency International TI | On 12 Feb 2016

Mapping Prevailing Ideas on Intellectual Property: Preliminary Findings from a Survey

Mapping Prevailing Ideas on Intellectual Property by Professor Jean-Frédéric Morin, Universitélibre de Bruxelles, examines an overlooked yet critical dimension of global IP governance: where do IP ide...

by | On 10 Feb 2016

The February 13 Agreement: A New Dawn for North Korea’s Denuclearization?

The aim of this paper is to analyze the February 13 Agreement’s implementation along with the prospects for the denuclearization of North Korea. The paper starts with an overview of North Korea’s comp...

by | On 09 Feb 2016

A Tragic Exit from Social Death

In spite of his continuous victimization, Rohith Vemula did live a life of the mind that militated against the caste of the mind.

by Gopal Guru | On 09 Feb 2016

Progress of the World's Women 2000

Launched in June of 2000, "Progress of the World's Women" is UNIFEM's biennial investigation of progress made towards a world where women live free from violence, poverty and inequality. The first iss...

by UN Women | On 08 Feb 2016

Religion and Depression in Adolescence

The probability of being depressed increases dramatically during adolescence and is linked to a range of adverse outcomes. Many studies show a correlation between religiosity and mental health, yet th...

by Jane Cooley Fruehwirth | On 07 Feb 2016

Can Welfare Conditionality Combat High School Dropout?

Based on administrative data, we analyze empirically the effects of stricter conditionality for social assistance receipt on welfare dependency and high school completion rates among Norwegian youths....

by Øystein Hernæs | On 07 Feb 2016

Remittances and Expenditure Patterns of the Left Behinds in Rural China

This paper investigates how private transfers from internal migration in China affect the expenditure behaviour of families left behind in rural areas. Using data from the Rural-Urban Migration in Chi...

by Sylvie Démurger | On 07 Feb 2016

Local Labor Market Conditions and Crime: Evidence from the Brazilian Trade Liberalization

This paper estimates the effect of local labor market conditions on crime in a developing country with high crime rates. Contrary to the previous literature, which has focused exclusively on developed...

by Rafael Dix-Carneiro | On 07 Feb 2016

Real Lives, True Stories

When we talk about corruption in terms of statistics, it’s easy to forget the human cost of abused power. Behind every fact or figure are real people, forced to live without the services, opportunitie...

by Transparency International TI | On 06 Feb 2016

Price Setting Behaviour of Pakistani Firms: Evidence from Four Industrial Cities of Punjab

Since the introduction of rational expectations in the literature, most of the research focus in the area of macroeconomics has been investigating micro foundations of macroeconomic theory and transmi...

by Wasim Shahid Malik | On 06 Feb 2016

An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship between Food Insecurity, Landlessness, and Violent Conflict in Pakistan

This study is an attempt to examine empirically the association between socio-economic measures of deprivation—such as food insecurity, landlessness, unemployment, and human under-development—and the...

by Sadia Mariam Malik | On 06 Feb 2016

International Trade and Access to Sustainable Energy: Issues and Lessons from Country Experiences

How can trade policy respond to the needs and concerns of more than a billion people in the developing world that lack access to energy for fulfilling their daily needs such as cooking and lighting? A...

by | On 05 Feb 2016

Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Operations

Transparency International has long held that the most directly damaging impact of corruption is the diversion of basic resources from poor people. Corruption in humanitarian aid is most egregious for...

by Transparency International TI | On 05 Feb 2016

The Process of National Security Decision-Making in Israel and the Influence of the Military Establishment

This study researches the decision-making process in national security matters in Israel; and examines the influence and role of the military establishment in this process. To achieve this purpose, th...

by | On 03 Feb 2016

Iraq, From Security to Political Management

This study begins with an assessment of the years of US occupation in Iraq, focusing on its repercussions, explicating its outcomes, and exploring the horizons of political evolution in this country a...

by | On 03 Feb 2016

Foreign Aid and the Fiscal Behaviour of Government of Pakistan

This study examines the effect of foreign aid on the fiscal behaviour of the Government of Pakistan. It applies the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model to analyse the relationship that prevailed betw...

by Rabia Butt | On 03 Feb 2016

The Global Financial Crisis and Investors' Behaviour: Evidence from the Karachi Stock Exchange

The present study empirically examines the short term under and overreaction effect in the Karachi Stock Exchange, Pakistan, in the context of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis considering the period f...

by Asiya Sohail | On 03 Feb 2016

Employment Strategy and Equitable Growth: A Social Capital Perspective for KPK

Although labour force participation in Pakistan has improved from 50.33 percent in 2006-07 to 57.24 percent in 2010-111 as well as employment has increased from 47.65 million to 53.84 million, however...

by Syed Akther Shah | On 02 Feb 2016

Pakistan: The Impact of Economic Liberalisation on Poverty

The reform program that Pakistan gradually implemented during the 1980s and the early 1990s dismantled many of the components of the ISI strategy.1 The extent of dependence on quantitative import cont...

by Zafar Mahmood | On 02 Feb 2016

Apostasy and the Freedom of Belief: A New Islamic Perspective

This paper offers a novel perspective on the concept of freedom of conscience in Islam and the rules of apostasy in which the author, YehyaJad revises the notion of the death penalty for the apostate....

by | On 02 Feb 2016

Children Affected by Armed Conflict in South Asia: A Review of Trends and Issues Identified Through Secondary Research

‘Armed conflict’ is defined in this report as the use of armed violence to resolve local, national and/or international disputes between individuals and groups that have a political, economic, cultura...

by | On 02 Feb 2016

Does It Pay to Care? Prosocial Engagement and Employment Opportunities

We investigate whether, why and when prosocial engagement has a causal effect on individual employment opportunities. To this end, a field experiment is conducted in which volunteering activities are...

by Suncica Vujic | On 02 Feb 2016

The Contribution of Palestinian Civil Society Organisations toward Achieving National Reconciliation in Palestine, 2007-2010

This study is an attempt to comprehensively examine the contribution of Palestinian Civil Society organizations toward ending Palestinian division and achieving national reconciliation. To this end, a...

by | On 01 Feb 2016

Remittances: An Unrecognised Support Mechanism During Humanitarian Crises

Remittances – money sent home by migrants – can help families survive conflicts or natural disasters. However, humanitarian agencies often fail to consider remittances when planning interventions. Thi...

by Paul Harvey | On 01 Feb 2016

The Role of NGOs In Conflict and Peace-Building

Non-government organisations (NGOs) have become increasingly involved in the international response to armed conflict, some aiming to mitigate the effects of war and others to help end the violence. B...

by Jonathan Goodhand | On 01 Feb 2016

Making it Safer to Cross Waterways in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has about 120,000 engineered rural waterway crossings (such as bridges) and another 250,000 non-engineered crossings built and maintained by communities. Because of a lack of financial and h...

by Granie Jayalath | On 01 Feb 2016

US Goals and Strategies toward the Arab World

This essay tries to delineate US interests and goals in the Arab region by trying to answer two fundamental questions: First, in light of its promise for change and following the dramatic transformati...

by | On 01 Feb 2016

The Ottoman Tanzimats and the Constitution

This study is rooted in the various contexts in which the Ottomans adopted the Tanzimat, a series of reforms in the 19th century, which later gave rise to a constitution. The philosophy behind the Ott...

by | On 01 Feb 2016

People, Policy, and Partnership for Disaster Resilient Development

The National Alliance of Disaster Risk Reduction (NADRR) was launched at a two-day workshop held in New Delhi on November 3rd and 4th, 2007. The workshop brought together over 150 participants represe...

by National Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction NADRR | On 01 Feb 2016

A Taste of Success: Examples of the Budget Work of NGOs

This report is a compilation of examples of the budget work undertaken by nongovernmental organizations from around the world. Although many of these organizations are new to budget analysis, they h...

by International Budget Partnership IBP | On 01 Feb 2016

Global Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Women A Human Rights Perspective

A gender analysis of the human rights situation is therefore necessary in order to understand the impact of the crisis on women and their livelihoods. In South Asia, there is an urgent need for engagi...

by Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural PWESCR | On 31 Jan 2016

Financing Mitigation and Adaptation by Developing Countries

There is a broad consensus that without the active participation of developing countries, global temperatures cannot be stabilized at a safe level. It is also agreed that even if temperatures are cont...

by United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs | On 31 Jan 2016

Challenges of Financing Human and Sustainable Development

Accelerating progress to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will serve to advance human development and also to lay a solid foundation for the pursuance of sustainable development goals a...

by United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs | On 31 Jan 2016

China and its Peripheries: Beijing and India-Sri Lanka Relations

China has emerged as one of the important factors in India-Sri Lanka relations. It is important to contextualise this intervening variable, before going into various aspects of China’s footprints in S...

by N Manoharan | On 31 Jan 2016

Are Trade Openness and Financial Development Complementary?

Trade liberalization and financial deepening have assumed greater significance for a country’s economic growth performance in recent times. This paper finds that trade openness and financial developme...

by Ram Upendra Das | On 30 Jan 2016

Relationship between Credit Rating, Capital Structure and Earning Management Behaviour: Evidence from Pakistani Listed Firms

Credit ratings have become a widely accepted measure of firms’ creditworthiness in financial markets. The present study aims to examine the impact of external credit ratings on the financial structure...

by Shoaib Ali | On 30 Jan 2016

Issues in Statistical Modelling of Human Capital and Economic Growth Nexus: A Cross Country Analysis

The human capital and growth relationship has been subject to a lot of debate in economic literature. The empirical growth models are beset with problems ranging from theoretical frameworks and statis...

by Verda Salman | On 30 Jan 2016

Women's Leadership and Corporate Performanace

Is leadership diversified in Asian corporate boardrooms? How is gender diversity in corporate leadership associated with financial performance? What is the magnitude of potential gain by allocating hu...

by Meijun Qian | On 30 Jan 2016

A Safe Public Transportation Environment for Women and Girls

This report provides evidence from three quite different cities in ADB’s Central and West Asia region of the prevalence of women being harassed on public transport. It goes on to show the impacts of t...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 29 Jan 2016

Teacher Shortage in the Arab World: Policy Implications

In the Arab world, there has been increased awareness on the instrumentality of education in fostering human and economic development and a realization that quality education contributes to the econom...

by | On 29 Jan 2016

Evidence from the Frontlines of Climate Change: Loss and Damage to Communities Despite Coping and Adaptation

New thinking and practical approaches are needed to address the threats to human security that climate change combined with social vulnerability pose for current and future patterns of loss and damage...

by Koko Warner | On 28 Jan 2016

Uneven Development and Regionalism: A Critique of Received Theories

This paper attempts at critically examining various theoretical approaches concerning uneven development and regionalism. Major theories propounded by the neo-classical regional school, institutionali...

by Sudarshan Iyengar | On 28 Jan 2016

Urban Health: Policy and Polity

This note examines selected issues in urban health from social perspective. In particular, it brings out the key challenges in targeting and planning for the urban poor; their mobilisation and partici...

by Meera Chatterjee | On 28 Jan 2016

Healthcare Challenges in Urbanizing India

Rapid urbanisation in India, driven by a globalised economy and its accelerated growth, will increasingly demand attention of policy makers. The objective of this policy note is to throw light on heal...

by Rajeev Ahuja | On 28 Jan 2016

Micro Determinants of Human Fertility: Study of Selected Physiological and Behavioural Variables in SC and ST Population

This paper is an attempt to study plausible causal relationship of women’s physiology and behaviour components with fertility in more or less non-industrial rural populations in Orissa, an Eastern Ind...

by Satyajeet Nanda | On 28 Jan 2016

Building Human Capital in East Asia: What Others Can Learn

While recognizing that education contributes to economic growth, investments in human capital contributed to high economic growth and also to better income distribution in East Asia; and human capital...

by | On 28 Jan 2016

Youth and Skills: Putting Education to Work

The global economic downturn is impacting on unemployment. One young person in eight across the world is looking for work. Youth populations are large and growing. The wellbeing and prosperity of youn...

by United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization | On 28 Jan 2016

Role of Gender in Health Disparity: The South Asian Context

South Asia's girls and women do not have the same life advantage as their Western counterparts. A human rights based approach may help to overcome gender related barriers and improve the wellbeing of...

by Omrana Pasha | On 28 Jan 2016

Report of the National Consultation on "Children and Governance: In the Context of Federalism and Devolution"

Economists and experts have been batting for bringing the fiscal federalism, the activist fora has been criticizing the newly brought in fiscal arrangements between Centre and States. This contradict...

by HAQ Centre for Child Rights HAQCRC | On 28 Jan 2016

Financial Inclusion and Livelihood Promotion of Rickshaw Pullers in India

The research study highlights the financial inclusion needs of cycle rickshaw pullers in India. These include access to service sectors; improvement of asset base; employment of their women; increase...

by | On 27 Jan 2016

Small World of Inter-Firm Network and Firm's Acquisition Behaviour

This study finds that the inter-firm network in India on account of director interlocks is a small world and the network has become more integrated since the introduction of corporate governance regul...

by | On 27 Jan 2016

Informal Work and Wellbeing in Urban South Asia: Who Succeeds, Who Fails and Under What Conditions?

Understanding and managing urbanisation in developing countries is one of the major global policy challenges for the first half of the 21st century. Rapidly growing towns and cities are increasingly r...

by | On 26 Jan 2016

Best Practices in the Integrated Child Development Services: Some Lessons for its Restructuring and Strengthening

Some innovations within the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) have demonstrated significant improvements in the nutritional status of children. This note discusses four such innovations, as...

by Ashi Kohli Kathuria | On 26 Jan 2016

Overcoming Challenges to Accelerating Linear Growth in Indian Children

Early childhood stunting or linear growth retardation predicts poor human capital. While stunting rates in India are unacceptably high, the decline in stunting over the past decades demonstrates that...

by Harshpal Singh Sachdev | On 26 Jan 2016

Total Factor Productivity of the Software Industry in India

This paper uses the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) to estimate change in total factor productivity (TFP) and its constituent components for software companies in India during 1999–2008. On average...

by Nira Ramachandran | On 24 Jan 2016

Child Marriage In South Asia

The briefing paper primarily focuses on violations of women’s and girls’ reproductive rights and right to be free from sexual violence arising from child marriage in six South Asian countries—Afghanis...

by Center for Reproductive Rights CRR | On 23 Jan 2016

Economic Growth In South Asia: Role Of Infrastructure

The paper examines the output elasticity of infrastructure for four South Asian countries viz., India,Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka using Pedroni’s panel cointegration technique for the period 19...

by Ranjan Kumar Dash | On 23 Jan 2016

Ensuring Access for the Climate Vulnerable in Bangladesh

Drawing on secondary literature and interviews and discussions with community members, local government officials, and various experts, the report proposes a mechanism through which LGIs could provide...

by International Centre for Climate Change and Develo ICCCAD | On 23 Jan 2016

Technological Upgradation in the Jute Mills of Bangladesh: Challenges and Way Out

The jute manufacturing sector of Bangladesh has recently started to revitalise with the rise in global demand for jute goods, thanks to the environment-friendly nature of jute, and the price hike of p...

by Khondaker Moazzem | On 23 Jan 2016

Imbalance in Child Sex Ratio: Trends, Causes and Emerging Issues

In many states of India, there are several evidences that indicate a widespread practice of using female birth intervention. As a result, an alarmingly lowest ever sex ratio in the age group 0-6 has b...

by R. S. Bora | On 23 Jan 2016

Do Rich Countries Invest Less in Poor Countries Than the Poor Countries Themselves?

Could a rich-country social planner, capable only of forcing capital flows across borders but not directly into the hands of individual poor-country entrepreneurs, improve the efficiency of the global...

by | On 22 Jan 2016

Access, Equity and Inclusion : Ethical Norms and S&T Policy Outcomes

In our research on science policy and inclusion and ethics in S&T policy we identified that in the Indian context Access, Equity and Inclusion (AEI) can be the norms to assess the policy outcomes and...

by Krishna Ravi Srinivas | On 21 Jan 2016

Cohort Profile: The Consortium of Health-Orientated Research in Transitioning Societies

The experience of working together on the original paper, which was published in 2008,6 was highly positive. This motivated Cesar Victora, on behalf of the principal investigators, to apply for a rese...

by Linda Richter | On 21 Jan 2016

Productivity in the Era of Trade and Investment Liberalization in India

Very recent years India has witnessed wide-ranging economic reforms in her policies governing international trade and FDI flows. As per the findings of the paper, some of the important determinants of...

by Ram Upendra Das | On 21 Jan 2016

Demographic Change, Brain Drain, and Human Capital: Development Potentials in Services-Driven South Asia

This discussion paper seeks to understand the nature of the ongoing demographic transition in South Asia and the challenges faced by the countries of the region to augment their future supply of skill...

by Biswajit Dhar | On 21 Jan 2016

Stunting among Children Facts and Implications

Indian children are very short, on average, compared with children living in other countries. Because height reflects early life health and net nutrition, and because good early life health also helps...

by Alessandro Tarozzi | On 20 Jan 2016

Role of Private Sector in Higher Education

The Standing Committee on Human Resource Development is currently examining the subject 'Role of Private Sector in Higher Education'. In this context, an analysis of the role of the private sector...

by Apoorva Shankar | On 20 Jan 2016

Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia: Results from a Pilot Project in Vietnam

Human trafficking is one of the most widely spread and fastest growing crimes in the world. However, despite the scope of the problem, the important human rights issues at stake and the professed inte...

by Ngan Dinh | On 19 Jan 2016

Does Clientelism Work? A Test Of Guessability In India

Research on clientelism broadly assumes that local political agents, or brokers, possess fine-grained information on voters’ political preferences, and often can directly or indirectly monitor their v...

by Mark Schneider | On 18 Jan 2016

A Tale Of Two Villages: Kinship Networks And Political Preference Change In Rural India

This paper develops a theory on how voters form and change political preferences in democratic developing world contexts. In the developing world, where state institutions are often weak, voters tend...

by Neelanjan Sircar | On 18 Jan 2016

Reappraising the Greed and Grievance Explanations for Violent Internal Conflict

Two phenomena have been recently utilised to explain conflict onset among rational choice analysts: greed and grievance. The former reflects elite competition over valuable natural resource rents. The...

by | On 18 Jan 2016

Educational Attainment of Young Adults in India: Measures, Trends and Determinants

Given the fact that education of young adults plays crucial role from both economic and social point of view, the objective of the study is to analyse the pattern of improvements in their education a...

by Runu Bhatka | On 18 Jan 2016

India-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement: Follow-up Concerns Need a Fair Approach

The recent success of India and Bangladesh in settling the complicated issue of political enclaves in each other’s territories could be traced to the spirit displayed by the leaders of the two countri...

by | On 18 Jan 2016

Language Proficiency of Migrants: The Relation with Job Satisfaction and Matching

We empirically analyze the language proficiency of migrants in the Netherlands. Traditionally, the emphasis in studying language proficiency and economic outcomes has been on the relation between earn...

by Hans Bloemen | On 15 Jan 2016

International Migration, Transfers of Norms and Home Country Fertility

This paper examines the relationship between international migration and source country fertility. The impact of international migration on source country fertility may have a number of causes, includ...

by Maurice Schiff | On 15 Jan 2016

A Profile of the World's Young Developing Country Migrants

Individual level census and household survey data are used to present a rich profile of the young developing migrants around the world. Youth are found to comprise a large share of all migrants, parti...

by David McKenzie | On 14 Jan 2016

Job Search Processes for Tribal People from Jharkhand and West Bengal

Millions of job seekers in South Asia, including many tribals, are forced by lack of local employment opportunities to migrate towards urban areas. This fieldwork-based study aims to understand specif...

by Rajib Dhar | On 13 Jan 2016

Female Migrants and their Health in India: A Study of Kerala Women Working in Mumbai

In this paper, an attempt has been made to understand the general, reproductive, and mental health status of migrant women from Kerala who stay in the working women’s hostels. The present study is bas...

by R. S. Reshmi | On 13 Jan 2016

Should Global Goal Setting Continue, and how, in the Post-2015 Era?

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were introduced to monitor implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration which set out a vision for inclusive and sustainable globalization based...

by Sakiko Fukuda-Parr | On 13 Jan 2016

Why Human Rights Fail to Protect Undocumented Migrants

In this article, I depart from the factual difficulties of undocumented migrants to access a state’s protection mechanisms for avowedly universal human rights. I relate this aporia to two competing co...

by | On 11 Jan 2016

The Effect of Childhood Migration on Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from Rural-Urban Migrants in Indonesia

Developing countries are experiencing unprecedented levels of urbanization. Although most of these movements are motivated by economic reasons, they could affect the human capital accumulation of the...

by | On 11 Jan 2016

Indian Military Diplomacy: Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief

The paper focuses on India’s approach to collaboration on Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief with major powers and within various regional initiatives. This paper begins with a brief review o...

by C. Raja Mohan | On 09 Jan 2016

Is India Making Waves in South China Sea?

The South China Sea (SCS) disputes are regarded as one of the most difficult regional conflicts in the Asia-Pacific, in an ‘arena of escalating contention. This paper looks at India’s interests and st...

by Rajeev Ranjan Chaturvedy | On 09 Jan 2016

New Maritime Silk Road: Converging Interests and Regional Responses

This paper discusses revival of the Maritime Silk Road. It begins with a narration of the historical background of MSR, its origin and development, followed by an analysis of latest announcements by t...

by | On 09 Jan 2016

Collapsing ‘Government’, Emerging ‘Governances’

Contrary to widespread belief, the collapse of ‘government’ does not automatically entail the collapse of ‘governance’. In a setting of ‘unstable’ livelihoods, households’ coping strategies, coupled w...

by | On 07 Jan 2016

Conflict through a Gender Lens

This brief suggests that those seeking an in-depth understanding of the social and political world need to apply a feminist curiosity – that is, a curiosity about the roles gender plays at all levels...

by | On 07 Jan 2016

Innovative Strategies in Higher Education for Accelerated Human Resource Development in South Asia Nepal

The report herein provide in-depth analysis of the state of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education in Nepal.

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 07 Jan 2016

Special Study on Sustainable Fisheries Management and International Trade in the Southeast Asia and Pacific Region

This paper analyzes the current status of fisheries and aquaculture in Southeast Asia and international trade. Analysis concludes that a policy of sustainable management for both capture fisheries and...

by Masayuki Komatsu | On 07 Jan 2016

Antibiotics on the Farm: Agriculture’s Role in Drug Resistance

The evidence that antibiotic use in agriculture creates a pool of resistant bacteria in farm animals is not in dispute. The key questions relate to the magnitude of the risk to human health, and the p...

by | On 06 Jan 2016

Fungible Borders and Informal Regionalism: Rethinking China’s International Relations

The processes of informal or soft regionalism driving China’s engagement with the regional and global economy are resulting in nuanced understandings of state, security and the conduct of internationa...

by Nimmi Kurian | On 05 Jan 2016

Malaysia Business Environment Index 2012: Challenges and Opportunities for Accelerating Local Business

The Malaysia Business Environment Index (BEI) Pilot Study 2012 is the first survey that investigates firms' perceptions about the business environment at the district level. Utilizing data collected f...

by The Asia Foundation | On 02 Jan 2016

Labour Migration Trends and Patterns: Bangladesh, India, and Nepal 2013

This regional study commissioned by The Asia Foundation entitled "Labour Migration: Trends and Patterns" examines the patterns and process of labour migration by Nepali and Bangladeshi migrant workers...

by The Asia Foundation | On 02 Jan 2016

State Building, Political Progress, and Human Security in Afghanistan

Based on the Asia Foundation’s , "Afghanistan in 2006: A Survey of the Afghan People." , the papers in this volume analyze survey data on the opinions and perceptions of Afghans towards government, pu...

by | On 02 Jan 2016

Summary of Indonesia's Gender Analysis

Indonesia has made significant progress in promoting gender equality. Gender gaps in the youth literacy rate have been eliminated. Near parity in enrollment rates in elementary up to tertiary levels h...

by Uzma Hoque | On 01 Jan 2016

Achieving Environmental Sustainability in Myanmar

With many environmental assets, and industrial pressure only beginning to develop, Myanmar could effectively form policies and regulations that ensure sustainable growth and conservation of key natura...

by Sakiko Tanaka | On 01 Jan 2016

The Relationship between Structural Change and Inequality: A Conceptual Overview with Special Reference to Developing Asia

Structural change has a far-reaching impact on inequality. Extensive structural change is both a cause and consequence of the exceptionally rapid economic growth, which enabled developing Asia to rais...

by Donghyun Park | On 30 Dec 2015

International Trade and Determinants of Price Differentials of Insulin Medicine

Empirical studies on pharmaceuticals pricing across countries have found evidence that prices vary according to per capita income. These studies are typically based on survey data from a subset of cou...

by Toshiaki Aizawa | On 29 Dec 2015

The Impact of Infrastructure on Trade and Economic Growth in Selected Economies in Asia

Infrastructure plays a key role in facilitating trade, especially since recent trade liberalization in Asia has resulted in significant tariff reductions. This study quantifies the impacts of both har...

by Jamilah Mahyideen | On 29 Dec 2015

Three Arrows of 'Abenomics' and the Structural Reform of Japan: Inflation Targeting Policy of the Central Bank, Fiscal Consolidation, and Growth Strategy

“Abenomics” refers to the economic policies advocated by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who became prime minister of Japan for a second time when his party, the Liberal Democratic Party, won an overwhelmin...

by Farhad Hesary | On 29 Dec 2015

The Future Women Want: A Vision of Sustainable Development for All

In this publication UN Women highlights the commitments made on gender equality, and explores women's contributions to sustainable development and policy around the world. Focusing on priority areas—s...

by UN Women | On 28 Dec 2015

Empowering Women Migrant Workers in Asia: A Briefing Kit

A new feature of international migration for work is the increase in the numbers of overseas women migrant workers, which in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka exceed the numbe...

by | On 28 Dec 2015

Endangering the Investment Climate

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require high levels of productive private and public sector investment, which in turn requires a suitable investment climate. This paper provide...

by | On 22 Dec 2015

National Refugee Law for India: Benefits and Roadblocks

This paper intends to ascertain whether a uniform national law would be beneficial to the interests of the three main parties involved with refugee policy in India, namely the Government of India, the...

by Arjun Nair | On 22 Dec 2015

The Sikh Diaspora and the Quest for Khalistan: A Search for Statehood or for Self-preservation?

This paper will reexamine the role of the Sikh Diaspora in the Sikh separatist movement, commencing in the 1980s, that loomed over the political, security, social, and humanitarian makeup of the Indi...

by | On 22 Dec 2015

Disability, Health and Human Rights

This paper addresses the issue of disability and its public health implications within the human rights framework. It also throws light on people with physical disabilities at least get noticed but th...

by Leni Chaudhari | On 21 Dec 2015

How Does ADB Engage Civil Society Organizations in Its Operations? Findings of an Exploratory Inquiry in South Asia

The focus is on South Asia and the starting point of inquiry is on 33 projects that illustrate the roles and forms of NGO and CBO engagement in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The rep...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 21 Dec 2015

Transitions to K-12 Education Systems Experiences from Five Case Countries

Preparing and implementing a K–12 transition absorbs considerable financial and human resources. It follows that the reasons for restructuring must be compelling. It follows that the reasons for restr...

by | On 21 Dec 2015

Missed Opportunities in Global Health: Identifying New Strategies to Improve Mental Health in LMICs

Countries like South Africa and India are putting new mental health policies in place. There is now a clear agenda of “what to deliver” to make this deplorable reality better, and indeed a nascent adv...

by Victoria Menil | On 19 Dec 2015

Currency Concerns under Uncertainty: Case of China

This note focus on some aspects relating to China’s currency. The paper discusses the twin surpluses which have been continuing in China’s external payments, especially in relation to trade which went...

by Sunanda Sen | On 18 Dec 2015

Managing the Family Firm: Evidence from CEOs at Work

We develop a new survey instrument to codify CEOs’ diaries in large samples and use it to measure the labor supply of 1,114 family and professional CEOs of manufacturing firms across six countries...

by Oriana Bandiera | On 18 Dec 2015

The Effect of Gender Equality Programming on Humanitarian Outcomes

Despite a number of developments in policy and practice aimed at integrating gender equality and women’s empowerment into humanitarian action, what remains missing is a strong evidence base that demon...

by UN Women | On 17 Dec 2015

In a Weak State: Status and Reintegration of Children Associated with Armed forces and Armed Groups (CAAFAG) in Nepal

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed on 21 November 2006, made an unprecedented commitment to those children who had been involved in Nepal’s decade long civil war. It stipulated that those ...

by | On 17 Dec 2015

Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Environments: A Critical Analysis of the UN Approach in Timor-Leste, Liberia and Nepal

This paper looks at possible alternatives to UN peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions with a view to establishing if there are organizations or other interested parties, which may be more effective...

by | On 17 Dec 2015

Improving the quality of girls’ education in madrasas in Bangladesh

Research around the world has demonstrated the important role that education plays in the empowerment of girls and women. Providing girls with a quality education can help prevent early marriage, prev...

by Musammat Badrunnesha | On 16 Dec 2015

Education Reforms, Bureaucracy and the Puzzles of Implementation: A Case Study from Bihar

It is a widely accepted truth that the Indian state suffers from a serious crisis of implementation capability. Despite widespread recognition of this crisis, there is remarkably little analytical wor...

by | On 15 Dec 2015

Big Data and International Development: Impacts, Scenarios and Policy Options

Many people are excited about data, particularly when those data are big. Big data, we are told, will be the fuel that drives the next industrial revolution, radically reshaping economic structures, e...

by | On 15 Dec 2015

Human Development Report 2015- Work for Human Development

From a human development perspective, work, rather than jobs oremployment is the relevant concept. A job is a narrow concept with a set of pre-determined time-bound assigned tasks or activities, in an...

by United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] | On 15 Dec 2015

Irregular Migration, Migrant Smuggling and Human Rights: Towards Coherence

This report examines the political predicament that confronts governments and other political actors when they address the issue of irregular migration. Primarily, it sets out the rights, and claims t...

by | On 10 Dec 2015

Empowering the Poor through Human Rights Litigation

The purpose of this manual is to collaborate with grass-roots organizations, in particular with NGOs, in defining the content of economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights) and to empower the ac...

by Maritza Formisano Prada | On 10 Dec 2015

Human Rights and Asian Values

The thesis that Asian values are less supportive of freedom and more concerned with order than discipline than are Western values and that the claims of human rights in the areas of political and civi...

by Amartya Sen | On 10 Dec 2015

Human Capital Potential of India's Future Workforce

This paper discusses India’s demographic dynamics and argues that policymakers have the widest window of opportunity with that segment of population which is poised to enter the workforce between 203...

by Ali Mehdi | On 09 Dec 2015

National Strategy Day on India: Delivering Growth in the New Context

The World Economic Forum along with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) convened the National Strategy Day on India on 3rd and 4th of November to provide a platform to boost economic growth and...

by | On 09 Dec 2015

Skill Transferability, Migration, and Development: Evidence from Population Resettlement in Indonesia

We use a natural experiment in Indonesia to provide causal evidence on the role of location-specific human capital and skill transferability in shaping the spatial distribution of productivity. From 1...

by Samuel Bazzi | On 08 Dec 2015

Health Assessment of Ganga River at Haridwar During Kumbh 2013

With a view to undertake the exercise the of health assessment of Ganga River River during Kumbh 2013 a water quality monitoring was done during Kumbh 2013. The present report is based on the socio-cu...

by People's Science Institute PSI | On 08 Dec 2015

Paris Climate Change Summit: Why it is Bound to Fail

Expectations are high for a good and fair new climate change agreement at the much anticipated on-going climate change summit in Paris. Such expectations are elusive if the negotiations fail to face...

by Raman Letchumanan | On 03 Dec 2015

What do Economists have to say about Climate Impacts on South Asia?

South Asia’s changing climate has had many different impacts including changes in ecosystems, more severe storms, rainfall that is more concentrated in a few days per year leading to more floods and m...

by E. Somanathan | On 01 Dec 2015

Adolescents under the Radar: In the Asia-Pacific AIDS Response

This report highlights the HIV crisis for vulnerable adolescents in Asia and the Pacific and what we can do to give them the support they desperately need. If we fail to do this, the world will not g...

by United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF | On 01 Dec 2015

Monitoring Mortality in Forced Migrants—Can Bayesian Methods Help Us to Do Better with the (Little) Data We Have?

The global number of forced migrants is currently the highest since the Second World War. This is a major concern to public health: lack of access to safe water, food, sanitation, and inadequate shel...

by Peter Heudtlass | On 30 Nov 2015

Youth Vulnerabilities in Life Course Transitions

This paper examines youth vulnerabilities, with a particular emphasis on low- and middle-income countries. It touches on the challenges confronted by young people exposed to extreme, life threatening...

by | On 26 Nov 2015

Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries

In Arab countries, a widespread lack of human security undermines human development, according to the Arab Human Development Report 2009: Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries. This repor...

by | On 26 Nov 2015

Children and Their Rights in Mining Areas: A Community Resource Guide

The Ministry of Mines’ fundamental job is to mine. Many of the violations and human rights abuses that result from mining, especially with respect to children, are not the mandate of the ministry to a...

by HAQ Centre for Child Rights HAQCRC | On 19 Nov 2015

Teaching Philosophy in Asia and the Pacific

The teaching of philosophy is undeniably one of the keystones of a quality education for all. It contributes to open the mind, to build critical reflection and independent thinking, which constitute...

by UNESCO UNESCO | On 19 Nov 2015

Workfare and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from India

The paper examines the effect of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), one of the largest workfare programs in the world, on human capital investment. Since NREGS increases labor...

by | On 16 Nov 2015

A New Benchmark for Human Rights

If it passes muster, Corporate Human Rights Benchmark will undeniably be the next big thing in human rights tracking

by Sudeep Chakravarti | On 10 Nov 2015

The Sunday Edit: Deaton, the Development Economist

Angus Deaton’s contributions to economics have been seminal providing development economists with new tools of analysis that have yielded policy-altering insights.

by Suryanarayana M H | On 07 Nov 2015

Non-Standard Work and Workers: Organizational Implications

In this paper provides an overview of the research on nonstandard work with a view to answering the following questions: (i) why do organizations use nonstandard workers, (ii) how has the practice of...

by | On 03 Nov 2015

Ending Malnutrition: From Commitment to Action

Ending Malnutrition offers key insights from the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) to catalyze follow-up actions across the world. It reviews current evidence on the prevalence of ma...

by Vikas Rawal | On 23 Oct 2015

Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights

This Report focuses on the economic and social dimensions of gender equality, including the right of all women to a good job, with fair pay and safe working conditions, to an adequate pension in older...

by UN Women | On 23 Oct 2015

Gender Equality and Human Rights

The achievement of substantive equality is understood as having four dimensions: redressing disadvantage; countering stigma, prejudice, humiliation and violence; transforming social and institutional...

by | On 20 Oct 2015

Aspirations and the Role of Social Protection: Evidence from a Natural Disaster in Rural Pakistan

This article uses Pakistan’s 2010 floods to identify the effects of a natural disaster on citizens’ aspirations. Aspirations were significantly reduced—especially among the poorest and most vulnerab...

by Katrina Kosec | On 19 Oct 2015

China’s One Belt One Road Strategy: The New Financial Institutions and India’s Options

This paper attempts to discuss India’s options to collaborate with China at the event of the formation of new financial institutions and how should India engage with China’s new Silk Road strategy.

by Ajay Chhibber | On 16 Oct 2015

Slavery at Sea: The Continued Plight of Trafficked Migrants in Thailand's Fishing Industry

The report reveals new evidence of human trafficking and the use of violence in the Thai fishing industry and inaction on the part of the Government to identify and prosecute criminals, corrupt offici...

by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) | On 16 Oct 2015

Development Strategy in Bihar through Revitalizing the Agricultural Sector: A Preliminary Analysis

Based mainly on secondary data and partly on primary information obtained through field surveys in selected rural areas in Bihar in 2011, this paper firstly argues the critical importance of agricultu...

by | On 11 Oct 2015

World Social Protection Report 2014-15: Building Economic Recovery, Inclusive Development and Social Justice

This ILO flagship report provides a global overview of the organization of social protection systems, their coverage and benefits, as well as public expenditures on social protection. The report follo...

by Internaional Labour Organization [ILO] | On 07 Oct 2015

Inside the News: Challenges and Aspirations of Women Journalists in Asia and the Pacific

Why does gender equality in the media matter? Because of the many influences that shape the way we see men and women, media are among the most powerful. Media shape our daily lives, infusing their mes...

by UNESCO UNESCO | On 07 Oct 2015

Attempting the Production of Public Goods through Microfinance: The Case of Water and Sanitation

This paper evaluates the attempt to create public goods via microfinance loans. Microfinance loans in the production of goods with public goods characteristics signify an emergent micro-privatisation....

by Philip Mader | On 06 Oct 2015

Rural Poverty Reduction Strategy for South Asia

Roughly 40 percent of the world’s poor live in South Asia, where poverty is basically a rural problem. Therefore, a significant gain in rural poverty reduction in this sub-region will be crucial to re...

by | On 30 Sep 2015

The Effect of ASEAN on Human Trafficking in Southeast Asia

This paper examines the trafficking of vulnerable populations in Southeast Asia and the effectiveness of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in combating human trafficking in the region. Human...

by | On 29 Sep 2015

Social Capital’s Dark Side and Patriarchy in India

Social capital is often extolled as a benevolent resource, but resources can be applied to any number of ends. Using new data from the India Human Development Survey (N=41,544), the author examined so...

by Lester Andrist | On 28 Sep 2015

Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. It recognises that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions...

by United Nations UN | On 28 Sep 2015

Report of the Fact Finding Mission to Rampal, Bangladesh

The objective of the mission was to evaluate the impact of the power plant on the livelihoods of the people and ecology of the region, examine the legal framework governing its and assess if the propo...

by South Asians for Human Rights SAHR | On 28 Sep 2015

Planning and Design for Sustainable Urban Mobility: Global Report on Human Settlements 2013

Planning and Design for Sustainable Urban Mobility argues that the development of sustainable urban transport systems requires a conceptual leap. The purpose 'transportation' and 'mobility' is to gain...

by UN-HABITAT | On 25 Sep 2015

Human Rights for All: International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

This Handbook is mainly for human rights practitioners who want to familiarise themselves with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and use the human rights fram...

by | On 23 Sep 2015

Towards Universal Access to Health Care in India

In this concept note authors aim to put forth a broad canvas of the various issues that need to be considered and positions that need to be formulated, in order to argue that it is possible to make Un...

by Dr. Abhay Shukla | On 23 Sep 2015

The Troubled Democracy of Bangladesh: ‘Muddling Through’ or ‘a Political Settlement’?

Is democracy in Bangladesh on a reverse course? Is there a culture of intolerance being engendered by deliberate design? Will creeping extremisms create an inevitable schism within the nation? The pap...

by | On 23 Sep 2015

The Nexus between Agriculture and Nutrition: Do Growth Patterns and Conditional Factors Matter?

This paper seeks to provide an overview of the complex and dynamic relationship between nutrition and growth, examine how different growth patterns lead to different nutritional outcomes, and identif...

by | On 22 Sep 2015

Designing and Evaluating Social Safety Nets: Theory, Evidence, and Policy Conclusions

This paper reviews the literature on the performance of commonly found social safety net programs in developing countries. The evidence suggests that universal food subsidies have very limited potenti...

by | On 18 Sep 2015

The Global Innovation Index 2015: Effective Innovation Policies for Development

The Global Innovation Index (GII) aims to capture the multi-dimensional facets of innovation and provide the tools that can assist in tailoring policies to promote long-term output growth, improved pr...

by | On 18 Sep 2015

Losing Our Minds? New Research Directions on Skilled Migration and Development

This paper critiques the last decade of research on the effects of high-skill emigration from developing countries, and proposes six new directions for fruitful research. The study singles out a cor...

by Michael Clemens | On 16 Sep 2015

Book Review: Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival

Review of Climate Insurgency: A Strategy for Survival by Jeremy Brecher. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2015. 170 pp. Rs. 8.925/- Hardcover, IISBN-13: 978-1612058207.

by Peter St. Clair | On 15 Sep 2015

India: Death Without Legal Sanction

This study highlights that India has not been complying with its obligations under the ICCPR and has indeed been imposing death penalty without legal sanction. While the violations of international fa...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 14 Sep 2015

The Costs and Benefits of Domestic Work as a Livelihood Strategy

Domestic work remains one of the key occupations for many female migrants in Southeast Asia. As a low skilled, low-wage job with often inadequate legal protection, domestic work is an occupation that...

by | On 14 Sep 2015

The Human Capital Report 2015

The Human Capital Index released by the World Economic Forum measures countries’ ability to maximize and leverage their human capital endowment. The index assesses Learning and Employment outcomes ac...

by | On 11 Sep 2015

Youth and Politics in India - II

This paper aims to uncover the features that make India’s youth politics so distinct from other forms of politics within the country, the kinds of politics young people participate in, and the kinds o...

by Rahul Advani | On 10 Sep 2015

Report of Working Group on Nutrition for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17)

This report details the vision for 12th Five Year Plan on Nutrition which is to move towards Nutrition Security- especially the more vulnerable infants and young children, adolescent, girls and women,...

by Planning Commission | On 10 Sep 2015

Debt-Bondage Slavery in India

There have been numerous investigations in recent years to determine the incidence and prevalence of modern slavery worldwide, and debt bondage in India has been found to be the most extensive form of...

by Sarah Knight | On 10 Sep 2015

Rethinking Trafficking: Patriarchy, Poverty, and Private Wrongs in India

Human trafficking is a large and growing problem, and sex trafficking is a particularly egregious form of contemporary enslavement of the most vulnerable: women and children. Yet a decade of anti-traf...

by Aditee Maskey | On 10 Sep 2015

Dalit Women and Social Exclusion in Nepal: A Concern for Social Justice

Nepali society is highly stratified with many glaring inequalities among different socioeconomic groups. The worst positioned among them are Dalits. The caste system segregates Dalits from the rest to...

by | On 10 Sep 2015

A Nation under Threat: The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Rights and Forced Migration in Bangladesh

The report explores how climate change has become one of the major challenges to the enjoyment of the basic rights to life, food, health, water, housing and self-determination in one of the World's mo...

by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) | On 08 Sep 2015

Pirates and Slaves: How Overfishing in Thailand Fuels Human Trafficking and the Plundering of Our Oceans

The report calls for overfishing, pirate fishing and modern-day slavery in the Thai fishing industry to be addressed as interconnected issues. It examines the complex and multi-faceted problems in Tha...

by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) | On 08 Sep 2015

How the Humanities Can Protect India Against the Attacks on Its Freedoms

Humanities departments in public universities are under attack across the country for their potential to spawn dissent. We need them to take the fight to the powers that be. [Transcript of a talk pres...

by Brinda Bose | On 07 Sep 2015

Nursing Shortage in India with special reference to International Migration of Nurses

In any health system, the health worker determines the nature and quality of services provided. Data demonstrate that most health systems across the globe face nursing shortages, varying across region...

by | On 07 Sep 2015

Change in Efficiency Level in Achieving Human Development: Inter-Temporal Comparison of Indian States

In India, research on human development has received considerable importance from both the academic and policy point of view. However, all the previous studies on human development mainly focused on t...

by Swati Dutta | On 04 Sep 2015

Indonesia: Concerted Efforts Needed to Find Solutions for Protracted IDPs

IDMC estimates that as of July 2015 at least 31,400 people are internally displaced as a result of conflict and violence in Indonesia. Nearly all are protracted internally displaced persons (IDPs) who...

by Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre | On 03 Sep 2015

The Permanent People’s Tribunals and Indigenous People’s Struggles in Mexico: Between Coloniality and Epistemic Justice?

On 21 October 2011, hundreds of Mexican civil society organizations formally submitted a petition to the Lelio e Lisli Basso Foundation in Rome to justify the opening of a Mexican Chapter of the Perma...

by Rosalba Icaza | On 02 Sep 2015

Needs vs Expediency - Poverty Reduction and Social Development in Post-Conflict Countries

Conflict depletes all forms of human and social capital, as well as supporting institutions. The scale of the human damage can overwhelm public action, as there are many competing priorities and resou...

by Tony Addison | On 01 Sep 2015

From Promises to Delivery: Putting Human Rights at the Heart of the Millenium Development Goals

This report focuses on three main issues – gender equality, maternal health and slums – which provide clear examples of how the MDGs and the targets set fall short of international human rights standa...

by Amnesty International AI, | On 31 Aug 2015

Generalisations, Omissions, Assumptions: The Failings of Vedanta’s Environmental Impact Assessments For its Bauxite Mine and Alumina Refinery in India’s State of Orissa

This report highlights deficiencies in the Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) undertaken by Vedanta Resources Plc for its proposed bauxite mine in Niyamgiri, Orissa, its alumina refinery in Lanji...

by Amnesty International AI, | On 31 Aug 2015

Exploited Dreams: Dispatches from Indian Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia has attracted more low-paid Indian migrants over the last 25 years than any other country in the Gulf region. Every day, close to 1,000 Indian low-wage migrant workers are provided with e...

by Amnesty International AI, | On 31 Aug 2015

Wages and Working Conditions on the Formal Labour Market in India

The labour market structure plays a vital role in chalking out the development and growth path of a country. The labour market polices, institutions, and patterns of employment in turn determine the s...

by Biju Varkkey | On 26 Aug 2015

China: Case study on Human Development Progress towards the Millennium Developmental Goals at the Sub-National Level

This paper analyses an overview of china human development in Time and Space. The paper covers themes like regional inequality in China Since 1952 and Urban-Rural Inequality, 1980-2000. The paper is a...

by | On 21 Aug 2015

Poverty Reduction in China and India: Policy Implications of Recent Trends

This paper compares the experience of poverty reduction in China and India. It finds that more than economic growth per se, what has mattered crucially is the nature of the growth: whether it is assoc...

by Jayati Ghosh | On 21 Aug 2015

Reduction of GHG Emissions and Attainment of Energy Security through Sustainable Production of Biofuels: Is it a Viable Option? A Review of Experinces

The National Policy on Biofuels sets an indicative target of 20per cent blending of biofuels by 2017 to tackle the twin problem of energy security and climate change. Although biofuels seem to be the...

by Gopinath Reddy | On 13 Aug 2015

Regulating Labour Recruitment to Prevent Human Trafficking and to Foster Fair Migration: Models, Challenges and Opportunities

This ILO paper highlights the relationship between inadequate mechanisms of recruitment and forced labour in its third Global Report on Forced Labour in 2009, stating that “there is growing awareness...

by Peter Swiniarski | On 12 Aug 2015

The Hidden Costs of the 2014 Gaza – Israeli Conflicts – Adolescent Girls’ Psycho- Social Wellbeing

The research focuses and is part of a broader project supported by the ReBUILD Consortium, which is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), to look at the linkages between me...

by | On 12 Aug 2015

Economics of Human Trafficking

This paper presents an economic model of human trafficking that encompasses all known economic factors that affect human trafficking both across and within national borders. The authors envision human...

by Elizabeth M. Wheaton | On 05 Aug 2015

IT Governance and IT Strategy: Board's Eye View

Banking in India and globally is undergoing and there are many challenges that are lying ahead. The basic underlying theme that runs through this changing landscape is the ever increasing reliance on...

by Harun R Khan | On 04 Aug 2015

Social Sector and Economic Reforms (With Special Reference to Public Health)

Social Sector performs an effective function in human resource development and hence it is very important to study how the economic reforms are influencing social sector expenditures. Any economic re...

by Runa Paul | On 03 Aug 2015

The Role of Technical and Vocational Education in the National Development of Bangladesh

Education is a basic human right and considered by many as a key tool for national development. However, this tenet has been challenged by several economists, especially Pritchett (1996). His empirica...

by Gazi Mahabubul Alam | On 03 Aug 2015

Book Review: Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons

Review of Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. 512 pp. Rs. 3.775/- (Hardcover), ISBN 978-0-231-16340-8.

by Mark Bray | On 31 Jul 2015

Dynamics of Youth Population- Impact of Education Expenditure

The youth constitutes the largest segment of the Indian population. Being the primary productive human resource, the socio-economic development of the Indian youth is directly linked to the developmen...

by | On 30 Jul 2015

Book Review: Indian Buddhist Philosophy

Review of Indian Buddhist Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2014. 256 pp. Rs. 1535/- (paper), ISBN 978-1-84465-298-3.

by Laura Guerrero | On 30 Jul 2015

Whither Right to Food? Rights Institutions and Hungry Labour in Tea Plantations of North Bengal

This paper explores what constitutes the mechanics of the legal and the administrative world of food rights in the Dooars area of West Bengal, specifically food rights of the tea plantation labourers....

by Geetisha Dasgupta | On 24 Jul 2015

Girls’ and Women’s Right to Education

This document compiles the explicit references to girls’ and women’s right to education in national reports and is intended to serve as a practical tool for both advocacy and monitoring. The factsh...

by UNESCO UNESCO | On 22 Jul 2015

Inequitable and Ineffective: Exclusion of Mental Health from the Post-2015 Development Agenda

Given that mental health and other non-communicable diseases were conspicuously omitted from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and have only been weakly mentioned in draft Sustainable Developme...

by Alexander C. Tsai | On 09 Jul 2015

Migration and Human Development in India

The paper discusses how gaps in both the data on migration and the understanding of the role of migration in livelihood strategies and economic growth in India, have led to inaccurate policy prescript...

by Priya Deshingkar | On 03 Jul 2015

Economic Development and Welfare: Some Measurement Issues

The concept of economic development has undergone a major change over the past few decades. The authors explain the conceptual and methodological framework based on which one may be able to assess so...

by Dipankor Coondoo | On 02 Jul 2015

Wrong Target for Benign Neglect

The school education system needs a desperate overhaul. The human resource development minister in New Delhi be focusing on it too, in the middle of her other pressing concerns.

by T.N. Ninan | On 27 Jun 2015

Reflections on India's Emergence in the World Economy

This paper attempts to capture how India embraced the world economy against the backdrop of the evolving domestic and international economic policy environment. It began with a brief overview of the...

by | On 24 Jun 2015

The Risk of Disaster-Induced Displacement in South Asia

This technical paper provides evidence-based estimates of the likelihood of disaster-induced displacement in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It att...

by Justin Ginnetti | On 24 Jun 2015

Buddha's Rationality

In discussions on rationalism and scientific spirit in current literature, the contributions of Buddha’s thought are, largely, ignored. And yet, Buddha’s emphasis on empirical verification; his attit...

by N S Siddharthan | On 21 Jun 2015

Culture’s Influence: Regionally Differing Social Milieus and Variations in Fertility Rates

This paper analyzes two social milieus in southern Germany and argues that variations in their fertility rates can only be understood through their cultural differences. Family extension patterns as w...

by | On 17 Jun 2015

Maldives: The Case for a Resolution at the 29th Session of the UN Human Rights Council

As the UN Human Rights Council holds its 29th session from 15th June 2015 to 3 July 2015, it ought to adopt a resolution on the deplorable human rights situation in Maldives as a consequence of the si...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 15 Jun 2015

The Legislative and Institutional Framework for Protection of Children in India

This paper presents a broad overview of the law, policy and legal institutions of child protection in India and examines the current legal issues in a rights-based perspective.It points out the poor e...

by Asha Bajpai | On 12 Jun 2015

The Migration of Women Domestic Workers from Sri Lanka: Protecting the Rights of Children Left Behind

Remittances that flow from low-skilled labor migration are critical to many developing countries, yet these economic benefits can come at a high price. Roughly half of all migrant workers are women, m...

by Brian Opeskin | On 12 Jun 2015

Child Labour & Educational Disadvantage – Breaking the Link, Building Opportunity

Compulsory education has a vital role to play in eradicating child labour. Getting children out of work and into school could provide an impetus for poverty reduction and the development of skills nee...

by Gordon Brown | On 12 Jun 2015

Five Growth Strategies for Myanmar: Re-engagement with the Global Economy

After decades of isolation, Myanmar is now actively re-engaging with the global economy. For successful re-engagement, Myanmar needs to implement comprehensive economic reforms based on a shared visio...

by So Umezaki | On 10 Jun 2015

Himachal Pradesh Human Development Report 2002

The Himachal Pradesh HDR attempts to assess and explain the status of human development in the State and articulate policy implications. In the light of the definition of human development itself, iss...

by Himachal Pradesh Government of India | On 09 Jun 2015

Gender Mainstreaming in Mining: Experiences across Countries

Mining not only has a negative impact on livelihoods, communities, and the socioeconomic and physical environment; it specifically and profoundly affects women. This paper uses the gender analysis fra...

by Prajna Mishra | On 08 Jun 2015

Gender Wage Gap in the Last Ten Years: A Case Study of India

This paper examines changes in the gender wage gap in India between the years 1999-2000 and 2009-2010, and analyses its determinants. Results of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition reveal that in the las...

by Nayni Gupta | On 05 Jun 2015

'Look East through Northeast': Challenges and Prospects for India

This paper focuses on the considerable hurdles and limitations encountered in carrying forward India's 'Look East' through Northeast—problems caused by the nature of physical terrain, the history of v...

by Subir Bhaumik | On 04 Jun 2015

Report of the Sixty-Seventh World Health Assembly on WHO Global Disability Action Plan 2014–2021

This provides guidance on the draft action plan for better health to disable people. There are more than 1000 million people with disability worldwide, about 15% of the global population. The prevalen...

by World Health Organisation (WHO) | On 01 Jun 2015

Report of the Working Group on Agricultural Research and Education for the Twelfth Five Year Plan 2012-17

This report mainly focuses on agricultural research and education so as to make the system demand-driven, enhance technology flow to farmers and bring transformational changes in Indian agriculture. T...

by Planning Commission | On 28 May 2015

Report of the Sixty-Eighth World Health Assembly on Global Technical Strategy and Targets for Malaria 2016–2030

Recalling resolutions on malaria control, and accelerating efforts to control and eliminate malaria in developing countries, particularly in Africa, by 2015. Acknowledging the progress made towards th...

by World Health Organisation (WHO) | On 27 May 2015

Draft Report of the Sixty-Seventh World Health Assembly on Global Strategy and Targets for Tuberculosis Prevention, Care and Control after 2015

At the Sixty-sixth World Health Assembly the executive board drafted a global strategy targets for tuberculosis prevention, with a aim to accelerate the global expansion of tuberculosis care and contr...

by World Health Organisation (WHO) | On 26 May 2015

Report of the Working Group on Outreach of Institutional Finance, Cooperatives and Risk Management for the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17)

The working group is of the opinion that the credit strategy should be aligned to agriculture growth strategy which in turn has to address broader macro economy concerns of supply management and issu...

by Planning Commission | On 21 May 2015

Report of the Working Group on Drugs & Food Regulations

Strengthening of Drugs Regulatory Mechanisms is one of the major public health interventions. This ensures that safe, efficacious and quality drugs are made available to the people. Keeping in view th...

by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare H & FW | On 21 May 2015

Experiences of Exploitation and Human Trafficking among a Sample of Indonesian Migrant Domestic Workers

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of workers seeking employment abroad, with the majority of these workers being females employed in domestic service. Due to the nature of recruitment, the proces...

by | On 15 May 2015

The Human Rights of Stateless Rohingya in Thailand

The Rohingya are an ethno-religious minority group from the Rakhine region, which today is encompassed within the borders of Myanmar and is adjacent to Bangladesh. The majority of Rohingya in Myanmar...

by The Equal Rights Trust | On 14 May 2015

Report of the Working Group on Agriculture and Related Issues on Dryland / Rainfed Farming System Including Regeneration of Degraded / Waste Land, Watershed Development Programme

The report provides a strategy in the field of agriculture related issues on Dryland / Rainfed Farming System including Regeneration of Degraded / Waste Land, Watershed Development Programme.

by Ministry of Agriculture GOI | On 13 May 2015

Promoting Human Development in India: Costs of Inequality

Policy emphasis in Indian economic development planning has always been on ‘economic growth with income redistribution’. Such a strategy seeks to exploit the potential of development programmes for po...

by Suryanarayana M H | On 11 May 2015

Understanding Poverty in India

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 effor...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 08 May 2015

Connecting the Last Mile: The Role of Communications in the Great East Japan Earthquake

The report explores how communities in the most devastated areas of the prefectures of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima got their information. It identifies which communications channels were used before,...

by Lois Appleby | On 04 May 2015

India Human Development Report 2011: Towards Social Inclusion

This Report examines: human development index and profile for India and its states; economic attainment of the population, especially in terms of the two major sources of income-employment and assets;...

by | On 27 Apr 2015

India in Figures 2013

This reports reflects development in the fields of population, Human development index, labour and houses, employment, prices, agriculture, industry.

by Environmental Management & Policy Research Institute | On 24 Apr 2015

Their lives on the line: Women rights defenders under attack in Afghanistan

Based on interviews with more than 50 rights defenders and their families, the 71-page document titled, "Their lives on the line: Women rights defenders under attack in Afghanistan," illustrates the r...

by Amnesty International AI, | On 14 Apr 2015

Trafficking of Minor Girls for Commercial Sexual Exploitation in India: A Synthesis of Available Evidence

Globally, the number of adults and children who are trafficked for forced labour, bonded labour or commercial sexual exploitation is estimated to be about 12 million. Though India has made several com...

by K G Santhya | On 10 Apr 2015

Pakistan: The Worsening IDP Crisis

Internally displaced persons operation was one of the first against armed anti-state fighters in the tribal belt, and marked the beginning of operations across the seven tribal agencies of the Federal...

by International Crisis Group | On 06 Apr 2015

Women’s Rights, Gender Equality, and Transition: Securing Gains, Moving Forward

This report is designed to contribute to the growing body of research on gender issues in Afghanistan with a specific focus on identifying gains and losses over the past decade at both the macro and m...

by | On 01 Apr 2015

"Stop Reporting or We’ll Kill Your Family" Threats to Media Freedom in Afghanistan

This 48-page report documents harassment, intimidation, and attacks on journalists and the Afghan government’s failure to investigate and prosecute those responsible. The failure to protect journalist...

by Human Rights Watch | On 26 Mar 2015

IMI Konnect Volume 4 Issue 1 - January 2015

The January 2015 issue of IMI Konnect (Volume 4, Issue 1) contains the following articles - Does Monetary Policy Limit Lending Behaviour of Banks? by Samaresh Bardhan; Entrepreneurship Education in In...

by IMI Konnect | On 24 Mar 2015

“Work Faster or Get Out” Labor Rights Abuses in Cambodia’s Garment Industry

Workers in Cambodia’s garment factories—frequently producing name brand clothing sold mainly in the United States, the European Union, and Canada—often experience discriminatory and exploitative labor...

by Human Rights Watch | On 20 Mar 2015

Regional Disparities in Growth and Human Development in India

This paper argues that that per capita income in all states in India increased in the past four decades but in fact no sign of convergence could be visible as it was expected in the context of liberal...

by | On 13 Mar 2015

Death Sentences and Executions 2012

This report covers the judicial use of the death penalty for the period January to December 2012. Amnesty International records figures on the use of the death penalty based on the best available info...

by Amnesty International AI, | On 13 Mar 2015

Gender Equality and Food Security: Women’s Empowerment as a Tool against Hunger

This report explores how gender equality can contribute to food security. Its focus is on Asia and the Pacific, though developments in other regions are also referenced. The report describes the relat...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 10 Mar 2015

Global Strategy for Women' s and Children's Health

The global strategy for women’s and children’s health reports the challenges on health and services provided to women and children around the world. It sets out the key areas where action is urgently...

by United Nations UN | On 03 Mar 2015

Medico Friend Circle Bulletin 363-364 (Jan/Feb 2015)

This special issue on mental health was put together for the Annual Meet of the Medico Friend Circle at Pune. Contents - Power to Label: the Social Construction of Madness by Prateeksha Sharma (1); T...

by Medico Friend Circle | On 18 Feb 2015

Declining Free Healthcare and Rising Treatment Costs in India: An Analysis of National Sample Surveys, 1986-2004

This paper focuses on the trends in health seeking behaviour of people and the cost of treatment by examining the National Sample Survey data pertaining to three rounds -1986-87, 1995-96 and 2004. Wit...

by Anil Gumber | On 13 Feb 2015

Delhi Human Development Report 2013: Improving Lives, Promoting Inclusion

The Delhi Human Development Report, 2013, has been structured around the theme ‘Improving Lives, Promoting Inclusion’. This theme encompasses all the fundamental concerns of human development that is,...

by | On 05 Feb 2015

A Post-2015 World Fit for Children

This issue brief outlines a roadmap for human progress over the next 15 years. Known as the Sustainable Development Goals, these new global targets will drive investment and action in virtually every...

by United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF | On 20 Jan 2015

Relations between Corruption and Human Rights in North Korea

North Korea’s public distribution system has been maintained somewhat perfunctorily since its severe economic hardship in the 1990s. However in reality, rationing to the working class has been suspend...

by | On 20 Jan 2015

Tribute: Jasodhara Bagchi

Jashodhara Bagchi was a leading Indian feminist critic and a prodigious professor in her field. She was a scholar who voiced women's cause and worked for their empowerment. She also was chairman of...

by Vibhuti Patel | On 19 Jan 2015

Economic Sociology and Political Economy: A Programmatic Perspective

The paper presents some of the ideas underlying the current research program of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG). It begins with a discussion of how the institute’s pro- gra...

by Jens Beckert | On 18 Jan 2015

Changing Norms about Gender Inequality in Education: Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper examines norms about gender equality of the education of children and adults in Bangladesh using a recent household survey for two cohorts of married women. Education norms are found to dif...

by Niels-Hugo Blunch | On 29 Dec 2014

Human Rights in North Korea: Addressing the Challenges

An international response to North Korea’s egregious human rights record has begun to take shape. Building on the work of NGOs and UN human rights experts, the United Nations Human Rights Council i...

by Roberta Cohen | On 26 Dec 2014

Report of the detailed findings of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

On 21 March 2013, at its 22nd session, the United Nations Human Rights Council established the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Resolution A/...

by | On 26 Dec 2014

Human Rights in India: An Overview

The situation of persistent human rights violations across the country presents manifold challenges. A number of progressive legal and policy initiatives have been taken by GOI. This paper highlights...

by Working Groups on Human Rights | On 12 Dec 2014

Women’s Malnutrition in India: The Role of Economic and Social Status

This study has used India Human Development Survey, 2005 to study the factors influencing the Body Mass Index (BMI) of women between 20 to 40 years of age in India. BMI captures both undernutrition...

by Shikha Dahiya | On 28 Nov 2014

Asia Child Marriage Initiative: Summary of Research in Bangladesh, India and Nepal

Child marriage is one of the most prevalent and serious violations of human rights. The issue needs urgent attention in South Asia, where 46 per cent of children are married formally or in informal u...

by Ravi Verma | On 27 Nov 2014

Promoting and Protecting the Rights of Migrant Workers

The Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (APF) is pleased to present Promoting and Protecting the Rights of Migrant Workers: The Role of National Human Rights Institutions. Nati...

by Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions | On 17 Nov 2014

Extended Families and Child Well-being

Using rich longitudinal survey data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS), evidence is presented on the relationship between three measures of health- and education-related human capital of c...

by Daniel LaFave | On 17 Nov 2014

Agriculture, Income and Nutrition Linkages in India

India contains the majority of the world’s malnourished children, yet malnutrition has declined only very slowly in recent years, despite rapid economic growth and apparent improvements in food securi...

by Suneetha Kadiyala | On 31 Oct 2014

Employment for Youth – A Growing Challenge for the Global Community

Social and economic challenges facing young people today must be understood in terms of the complex interaction between unique demographic trends and specific economic contexts. There has been an...

by Ragui Assaad | On 27 Oct 2014

Revealed Preference for Open Defecation: Evidence from a New Survey in Rural North India

Despite economic growth, government latrine construction, and increasing recognition among policymakers that open defecation constitutes a health and human capital crisis, it remains stubbornly widesp...

by Diane Coffey | On 07 Oct 2014

Human Development Progress in South Asia: Achievements and Challenges

Rapid human development progress in India, Bangladesh and other South Asian nations is helping drive a historic shift in global dynamics, with hundreds of millions of people rising from poverty and bi...

by Rameshwar Jat | On 26 Sep 2014

Does Parental Education Affect the Impact of Provision of Health Care on Health Status of Children? - Evidence from India

The objective of the study is to analyse the impact of provision of health care facilities on the child health status taking into account the utilization of these available facilities. The study offer...

by Runu Bhatka | On 19 Sep 2014

Protecting the Girl Child: Using the Law to End Child, Early & Forced Marriage & Related Human Rights Violations

Cultural traditions and a lack of legal protections are driving tens of millions of girls around the world into early marriage, subjecting them to violence, poverty and mistreatment. Equality Now, in...

by Equality Now | On 12 Sep 2014

Scaling up Rural Sanitation in India

The WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program (JMP) for Water and Sanitation, which tracks progress towards the water and sanitation targets of the Millennium Development Goals, estimates that 36% of the wo...

by Clarissa Brocklehurst | On 10 Sep 2014

Spatial Convergence and Growth in Indian Agriculture: 1967-2010

Inter-state diversity has been a perennial feature of Indian agriculture. The study probes if per capita income in Indian agriculture has converged across states in the last four and a half decades. I...

by Tirtha Chaterjee | On 06 Sep 2014

India: Death Penalty Has No Deterrence

Two people are sentenced to death every day in India, but it has not proved to be a deterrent to crime, says the latest report by NGO Asian Centre for Human Rights. Analysing government data for 12 ye...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 02 Sep 2014

Human Development Report 2014 - Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience

The 2014 Report highlights the need for both promoting people's choices and protecting human development achievements. It takes the view that vulnerability threatens human development, and unless it i...

by United Nations Development Programme UNDP | On 20 Aug 2014

India Science Report - Science Education, Human Resources and Public Attitude towards Science and Technology

The present report focuses on science education, human resources in science & technology and public understanding of science. A custom-designed survey, the India Science Survey 2004, funded by INSA, w...

by Rajesh Shukla | On 28 Jul 2014

Power and Resistance: Silence and Secrecy in Avatar - The Last Airbender

In the American animated television series, Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA), a visually Asian-influenced world of humans, animals and spirits plays out a history of violence, trauma and resistance....

by Gayatri Viswanath | On 24 Jul 2014

Union Budget 2014: Marginal Realignment of Tactics to Strategy

The article examines the restructuring of expenditure in the first budget of the new government, and its feasibility. It compares the increase in budget allocations for key macroeconomic aggregates a...

by Ashima Goyal | On 21 Jul 2014

Three Decades of Human Development across Indian States: Inclusive Growth or Perpetual Disparity?

The importance of strengthening the human development (HD) achievements in a country to augment its growth potential is well known in development literature. Several initiatives to enhance the HD leve...

by Sacchidananda Mukherjee | On 24 Jun 2014

Project Brazilian Dreams

The Brazilian Dream Project is a non-profit social responsibility endeavour with no consumption bias, that arose from the ever more clearly awareness that Brazil has reached an unprecedented moment in...

by Box 1824 | On 18 Jun 2014

Trafficking Women and Children for Sexual Exploitation

Irrefutable is the fact that trafficking of women and children is a grave violation of Human Rights and one of the most serious organized crimes of the day, transcending cultures, geography and time....

by P.M Nair | On 18 Jun 2014

Contractual Solutions for Migrant Labourers: The Case of Domestic Workers in the Middle East

This article discusses domestic and international responses to the issue of abuse of female domestic workers in the Middle East, and concludes that a standard working contract, such as that in use in...

by Gwenann S. Manseau | On 26 May 2014

Medical Negligence and Compensation in India: How Much is Just and Effective?

This paper examines the issues related to just, adequate and effective compensation in cases of medical negligence and provides certain suggestions. [IIMA W.P. No.2014-03-27].

by Anurag K Agarwal | On 22 May 2014

The Real Wealth of Nations:Pathways to Human Development

This Report surveys critical aspects of human development, from political freedoms and empowerment to sustainability and human security, and outlines a broader agenda for research and policies to resp...

by Jeni Klugman | On 06 May 2014

Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All

The Human Development Report 2011 explores the integral links between environmental sustainability and equity and shows that these are critical to expanding human freedoms for people today and in gene...

by Jeni Klugman | On 06 May 2014

The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World

The 2013 Human Development Report, The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World looks at the evolving geopolitics of our times, examining emerging issues and trends and also the new actors...

by Khalid Malik | On 06 May 2014

The Food Security Policy Context in South Africa

The analysis in this report leads to an overall conclusion that the IFSS is an excellent strategy on paper and a relevant framework for different stakeholders, but in reality it lacks implementing pow...

by Josee Koch | On 29 Apr 2014

Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition

This report highlights the way in which poverty and a?uence intersect with age-old divisions of regional inequalities, gender, caste, and religion that have long structured human development in India....

by Sonalde Desai | On 17 Apr 2014

(En) Gendering a Rights Revolution

The article highlights of the SC judgment on Transgender Rights and why it will go down in history as one of the most rights enhancing decisions in the Court’s history.

by Siddharth Narrain | On 16 Apr 2014

Too many missed opportunities: Human rights in Afghanistan under the Karzai administration

This report presents an assessment of the human rights record of President Hamid Karzai’s administration, following the ousting of the Taliban. Amnesty International has evaluated overall trends of pr...

by Amnesty International AI, | On 11 Apr 2014

Politics and Public Policies: Politics of Human Development in Uttar Pradesh, India

In India, public policies for human development are politically contested for many reasons like diverse political interests, commitment to specific social bases by political regimes etc. They have r...

by Shyam Singh | On 10 Apr 2014

Aggregate Fertility and Household Savings: A General Equilibrium Analysis using Micro Data

This study uses micro data and an OLG model to show that general equi- librium forces are critical for understanding the relationship between aggregate fertility and household savings. [BREAD WP No....

by Abhijit Banerjee | On 03 Apr 2014

Lok Sabha Elections, 2014: Fascism, Democracy’s Challenges and Role of Citizens

PUCL through this statement, wishes to bring to the attention of the people of India, the serious threat to democracy itself and the human rights challenges posed by the electoral alliances and cal...

by People's Union of Civil Liberties PUCL | On 03 Apr 2014

Is Self-Employment the Answer to Caste Discrimination? Decomposing the Earnings Gap in Indian Household Nonfarm Businesses

Using the India Human Development Survey data for 2004-05, two methodologies are used to estimate the earnings structure of household nonfarm businesses owned by Scheduled Castes and Tribes (SCSTs)...

by Ashwini Deshpande | On 20 Mar 2014

Economic Growth, Health and Poverty: An Exploratory Study for India

This article analyses the possible links between economic growth, poverty and health, using panel data for the Indian states. The findings indicate that, though growth tends to reduce poverty, signifi...

by Indrani Gupta | On 04 Mar 2014

Human Development, Poverty, Health & Nutrition Situation in India

This study was undertaken to assess the trends in HDI, human poverty index (HPI) and incidence of poverty among Indian states, the socio-economic, health, and diet and nutritional indicators which det...

by G.M. Antony | On 28 Feb 2014

Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India

In 2006 Sachar Committee prepared a report on the social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community in India. The Indian Constitution is committed to the equality of citizens and the res...

by Ministry of Human Resource Development, GOI | On 20 Feb 2014

Sold to the Sea: Human Trafficking in Thailand's fishing industry

Thailand’s economy is heavily reliant on labour-intensive industries. However, growing economic prosperity since the late 1980s has seen a decline in the available Thai workforce needed to meet the la...

by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) | On 24 Jan 2014

India’s Role For Promotion of Human Rights in Third Countries Through Universal Periodic Review

This report analyses India’s Role For Promotion of Human Rights in Third Countries Through Universal Periodic Review. Under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism, the United Nations Human Righ...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 23 Jan 2014

The Price of Steel-Human Rights and forced evictions in the POSCO-India Steel Project

The POSCO project in India is a story all too familiar. This is a story about attempts to forcibly evict thousands of families from their homes, their fields, and their forests to make way for a massi...

by Smita Narula | On 22 Jan 2014

India, Bangladesh and Nepal: Learning Lessons, Facing Challenges.

In many ways, India is kindred with its two neighbors, Bangladesh and Nepal. Whether it is in geography I or demographics, infrastructure or economic issues, or poverty and human development, these th...

by Jayshree Sengupta | On 21 Jan 2014

Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Operational Plan, 2013–2020

Gender equity is one of the five drivers of change in the Asian Development Bank(ADB) Strategy 2020. ADB recognizes that without harnessing the talents, human capital and economics potential of women,...

by Asian Development Bank Institute | On 20 Jan 2014

Health in the Post-2015 Development Agenda for Asia and the Pacific

The paper discusses the key health challenges in the post 2015 development agenda for Asia and the Pacific, a highly populated, diverse region of countries with different health needs and priorities....

by Yanzhong Huang | On 20 Jan 2014

Manual for Integrated District Planning: Report of the Task Force of the Planning Commission

This manual is a step by step guide to district planning which will assist planners at the local, district and State levels. District planning, by taking into account resources locally available, in...

by Planning Commission | On 07 Jan 2014

Editors’ Wishes for an Illuminated Season and an Open New Year

There are great opportunities for Open Access publications to advance human health, provided the medical research and publishing communities can rise to the challenges that come with them. There are m...

by Plos medicine Editors | On 06 Jan 2014

Editors’ Wishes for an Illuminated Season and an Open New Year

There are great opportunities for Open Access publications to advance human health, provided the medical research and publishing communities can rise to the challenges that come with them. There a...

by Plos medicine Editors | On 02 Jan 2014

Child Work and Schooling in Rural North India: What do Time Use Data Say about Tradeoffs and Drivers of Human Capital Investment?

This study examines time use data for 1244 children in the age-group 6-12 years in 274 villages in eight states in rural north India to understand the tradeoffs between time spent in school, time sp...

by Sudha Narayanan | On 02 Dec 2013

Asia's Rising Power and America's Continued Purpose

This paper examines a range of possible outcomes in strategic Asia and evaluates the likelihood of each outcome based on the prospective performance of the U.S and the Chinese economies, potential pol...

by Aaron Friedberg | On 26 Nov 2013

Migrant Workers’ Rights to Social Protection in ASEAN: Case Studies of Indonesia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand

The UN estimates that there are 214 million migrants globally (IOM, 2010), making up 3% of the world’s total population. Increasing rapidly, the number of migrants globally could exceed 400 million by...

by FREDRICH STIFTUNG | On 15 Nov 2013

Nepal’s Constituent Assembly Elections: A Lesson For The Convicted Politicians?

As Nepal prepares to hold the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections on 19th November 2013, there already seems to be one positive lesson: those “convicted of a criminal offence involving moral turpitu...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 11 Nov 2013

Global Slavery Index

Modern slavery includes slavery, slavery-like practices (such as debt bondage, forced marriage, and sale or exploitation of children), human trafficking and forced labour. This is the first year of...

by Walk Free Foundation | On 18 Oct 2013

Ostracised and Abandoned: Widows in India

Widows from West Bengal, the northeastern states and Bangladesh still make their way to the ashrams of Vrindavan, Mathura and Varanasi, in the hope that in the holy cities, god will not allow anyone t...

by Hutokshi Doctor | On 15 Oct 2013

Human Development in India: Cost of Inequality

The article shows how it is possible to achieve economic growth and equitable income distribution using human development approach through empirical evidence from the state of Kerala.

by Ankush Agrawal | On 14 Oct 2013

The Human Capital Report

The Human Capital Index explores the contributors and inhibitors to the development and deployment of a healthy, educated and productive labour force, and has generated the information contained in...

by World Economic Forum WEF | On 04 Oct 2013

How will India Facilitate a Credible and Independent Investigation in Sri Lanka?

At the UN Human Rights Council’s (HRC) 22nd session in Geneva India quietly registered its dismay at the lack of progress made by Sri Lanka since its commitments at the Council in 2009. While urging...

by Raghu Menon | On 14 Sep 2013

Preliminary Evidence on Internal Migration, Remittances, and Teen Schooling in India

Migration can serve as an outlet for employment, higher earnings, and reduced income risk for households in developing countries. The 2004–2005 Human Development Profile of India survey is used to exa...

by Valerie Mueller | On 06 Sep 2013

Do Open Sewers Lead to a Reduction in Housing Prices? Evidence from Rawalpindi, Pakistan

The Hedonic property value method is used to estimate how a dismenity, bad odor from an open sewer system, affects housing prices in the city of Rawalpindi in Pakistan. An estimate of the benefits of...

by Mohammad Irfan | On 05 Sep 2013

Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function

The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. The authors hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypoth...

by Anandi Mani | On 04 Sep 2013

India Shadow Report

The gains made since ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) are plenty, but the reality of children’s situation is disturbing on many counts calling for urgent and serious att...

by HAQ Centre for Child Rights HAQCRC | On 26 Aug 2013

Anti-Superstition Legislation

After a long and gruelling campaign by ANS for the past eight years to enact a Law against Superstition which harm the citizens, the Maharashtra State Government under the leadership of the new Chie...

by Maharashtra Andhshraddha Nirmoolan Samiti MANS | On 22 Aug 2013

The Effect of Breastfeeding on Educational Attainment: Evidence from Sibling Data

Using data on sibling pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate the effect of having been breastfed on high school graduation, high school grades, and coll...

by Denizhan Duran | On 08 Aug 2013

Basic Household Amenities in India: A Progress Report

The present paper makes an attempt to analyse the progress of India in three important ‘basic human needs’ essential for a human life. These are access to latrine facility, safe drinking water and ele...

by Udaya S. Mishra | On 01 Aug 2013

National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy-2012 (NDSAP-2012)

The National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) is designed so as to apply to all sharable non-sensitive data available either in digital or analog forms but generated using public funds by...

by Ministry of Science and Technology GOI | On 30 Jul 2013

Ways of Knowing Science

What is Science? By Sundar Sarukkai National Book Trust, New Delhi; 229 pp; Rs. 405.

by Anu Joy | On 23 Jul 2013

Nutritional status of school going adolescents in a rural block of Darjeeling, West Bengal, India

Background: Poor nutritional status during adolescence is an important determinant of health outcome. The adolescents have different needs and have diverse problems. This study was conducted to asses...

by Dey I | On 15 Jul 2013

Does Political Competition Influence Human Development? Evidence from the Indian States

Recently, it has been argued that political competition may have similar effects on economic performance as market competition. This study empirically examines this proposition by linking political co...

by Bharatee Bhushan Dash | On 05 Jun 2013

Issue of Declining Child Sex Ratio

As per the Census, the child sex ratio (0-6 years) has shown a sharp decline from 927 females per thousand males in 2001 to 914 females per thousand males in 2011.

by Anonymous | On 27 May 2013

Revisiting the Growth-Inflation Nexus: A Wavelet Analysis

Motivated by the concern that the recent surge in inflation could retard growth, the paper revisits the nexus between inflation and growth from the perspective of an emerging economy, India. Examining...

by Saumitra N Bhaduri | On 23 May 2013

Submission of 1392 National Budget, Afghanistan

H.E Finance Minister’s Speech for Mishrano Jirga. [Ministry of Finance, Afghanistan]. URL:[http://mof.gov.af/Content/files/HE%20Minister%20Speech%20to%20Mishranow%20Jirga-%20English%20after%20review....

by Ministry of Finance Afghanistan | On 10 Apr 2013

Economic Survey 2012-13: A Comedy of Errors?

There is lack of clarity and concepts in the Economic Survey. The Survey has not covered many topics which it was expected to cover.

by Suryanarayana M H | On 02 Mar 2013

Labour Market and Household Behaviour: A Case of Unorganised Saleswomen

The present study is an attempt to analyse the labour market of unorganized saleswomen (working in the registered as well as unregistered shops) in Ernakulam District, Kerala.

by Martin Patrick | On 25 Feb 2013

Identification for Development: The Biometrics Revolution

This paper surveys 160 cases where biometric identification has been used for economic, political, and social purposes in developing countries. About half of these cases have been supported by donors...

by Alan Gelb | On 15 Feb 2013

New Frontiers, New Struggles: Press Freedom in South Asia 2011-12

Journalism in South Asia is facing many challenges with physical security being a major issue in most of the region. Several countries may have improved relatively due to decisions to reduce the risks...

by International Federation of Journalists IFJ | On 04 Feb 2013

PUDR's Submission of Suggestions to Verma Commission for Changes in Law and Procedure Regarding Violence Against Women

Legal mechanisms to achieve justice should factor in the challenges and roadblocks of its implementation, structural or otherwise, right from the stage of planning and framing the law. Law can be expe...

by D Manjit | On 08 Jan 2013

Provide Human Security through Human Development

Review of the book 'Peace is Everybody's Business: Strategy for Conflict Prevention' by Arjun Ray. Number of pages: 264, Price Rs. 495/-.

by Irfan Engineer | On 03 Dec 2012

Foreign Investment in Farmland No Low-hanging Fruit

A key driver of foreign investment in land, food security is a challenge mankind has been confronted with in various times and places. Wherever human societies have developed, growing needs have led t...

by Claire Schaffnit Chatterjee | On 15 Nov 2012

Demographics, Labor Mobility, and Productivity

This paper considers two major issues that need to be treated as matters of urgency. First, internal (within country) migrations in the Asian (ACI) region are mostly undocumented and large. It is show...

by E J Wilson | On 05 Nov 2012

Tackling Urban and Rural Food Wastage in Southeast Asia: Issues and Interventions

Food wastage is prevalent in Southeast Asia and has significant implications for the region’s food, environmental and economic security. It is likely that the region wastes approximately 33 per cent o...

by Paul S Teng | On 08 Oct 2012

‘Grand Challenges to Global Mental Health’: Critical perspectives on the US-NIMH initiative

In 2011 the US National Institute of Mental Health launched the Grand Challenges to Global Mental Health on the lines of earlier initiatives on ‘Global Health’ and on ‘Global Chronic Non-Common-commun...

by Anonymous | On 05 Oct 2012

The Gender Gap in Mathematics: Evidence from Low-and-Middle Income Countries

Is there a gender gap in mathematics across many low- and middle-income countries? A detailed, comparable test score data is used to analyze this. Micro level data on school performance linked to h...

by Prashant Bharadwaj | On 04 Oct 2012

The Sexual Harrasment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Bill, 2012

The Lok Sabha (the Lower House of the Parliament) has, on 3 September 2012, passed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Bill, 2012. The Bill now remains...

by Ministry of Labour and Employment MoL&E | On 01 Oct 2012

Poverty, Human Development and Health Financing in India

This study aims at analyzing the differentials across rich and poor states and across rich and poorer strata and rural urban segments of 19 major Indian states. The study indicates that besides ind...

by Brijesh C Purohit | On 28 Sep 2012

On China’s Traditional Culture and Peaceful Development Strategy

This article discusses the cultural basis and origins of the idea of this strategy from the point of view of China’s traditional culture and historical development and analyzes the the reality of C...

by Wang Dewen | On 27 Sep 2012

What Do Teachers Do? Teacher Quality Vis-a-vis Teacher Quantity in a Model of Public Education and Growth

This paper analyses the contribution of teachers in a public education system and its implication for growth. Focus is given exclusively on two teacher-specfi?c inputs (teacher quality and teacher q...

by Mausumi Das | On 21 Sep 2012

NATIONAL YOUTH POLICY 2003

The earlier National Youth Policy was formulated in 1988. The socio-economic conditions in the country have since undergone a significant change and have been shaped by wide-ranging technological adva...

by Ministry of Youth and Sports Affairs YAS | On 12 Sep 2012

Health Policy Processes in Gujarat: A Case Study of the Policy for Independent Nurse Practitioners in Midwifery

The policy processes of the policy on ‘Nurse practitioners in midwifery’ (NPM) are described. The policy aims to educate and create a new cadre of competent midwives in the government hospitals as an...

by Sharma Bharati | On 03 Sep 2012

The Economic Consequences of Excess Men: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Taiwan

As sex ratio imbalances have become a problem in an increasing number of countries, it is important to understand their consequences. With the defeat of the Kuomintang Party in China, more than one mi...

by Simon Chang | On 28 Aug 2012

Issues in Development Studies in the 21st Century

Review of the book Challenges for Development in 21st Century by Ruby Ojha, B.R. Publications, 2011.

by Vibhuti Patel | On 14 Aug 2012

Are Embankments a Good Flood-­-Control Strategy? A Case Study of the Kosi River

This paper makes a first pass at evaluating embankments. Using two years or more of data from 504 households in 28 villages in the floodplain of the Kosi river in north Bihar, a comparison of the agri...

by E Somanathan | On 25 Jul 2012

Obituary: Mrinal Gore (1928-2012)

Obituary: Mrinal Gore (1928-2012)

by Vibhuti Patel | On 23 Jul 2012

How Close Does the Apple Fall to the Tree? Some Evidence on Intergenerational Occupational Mobility from India

Using data from the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2005, intergenerational occupational mobility in India is examined, an issue on which very few systematic and rigorous studies exist. Individ...

by Sripad Motiram | On 12 Jul 2012

India’s 2012 UPR Examination: No Commitment on Enhancing Human Rights but a Mountain to Climb

On 24th May 2012, the United Nations Human Right Council reviewed India’s human rights record during the 13th session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) in Geneva, Switzerland. This was India’s...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 12 Jul 2012

Recommendations on the Proposed Disability Rights Legislation

Estimates of persons with disabilities (PWDs) in India vary greatly depending on the source. The 2001 census found 21.91 million disabled persons (2.13 % of the population), but there are serious cons...

by National Advisory Council NAC | On 11 Jul 2012

Does Access to Secondary Education Affect Primary Schooling? Evidence from India

This paper investigates if better access to secondary education increases enrolment in primary schools among children in the 6–10 age group. A household-level longitudinal survey is also done coveri...

by Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay | On 10 Jul 2012

Homo Biometricus: Biometric Recognition Systems and Mobile Internet Services

Biometric procedures are already accepted by millions of people every day on a variety of (social) internet platforms. Biometric identification procedures and their potential applications in everyday...

by Thomas F Dapp | On 05 Jul 2012

Responsibility to Protect in Southeast Asia: Enlarging Space for Civil Society

The concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is relatively new to many Southeast Asians, who have traditionally relied on the state for security and therefore faced a sense of hopelessness when such...

by Pavin Chachavalpongpun | On 27 Jun 2012

Inclusive National Accounts: Introduction

An outline of what would be ideally needed for a comprehensive set of national accounts is given. National governments and international agencies ought ideally to go even beyond green national accoun...

by Partha Dasgupta | On 22 Jun 2012

Human Capital, Economic Growth, and Inequality in China

The paper examines the Chinese Economy on the basis of four factors namely, human development, education, growth and inequality. [IZA DP No. 6550] URL: [http://ftp.iza.org/dp6550.pdf]

by James J Heckman | On 01 Jun 2012

Awake the Sleeper Within: Releasing the Energy of Stifled Domestic Commerce!

Policy in Pakistan has been fairly path-dependant, placing a higher weight on export promotion and domestic industrialisation development than on domestic commerce. Yet domestic commerce is growing...

by Nadeem Ul Haque | On 28 May 2012

Climate Change Vulnerability of Mountain Ecosystems in the Eastern Himalayas

The ecosystem of the Eastern Himalayas are vulnerable to climate change as a result of their ecological fragility and economic marginality. The conservation policies at national and regional levels ar...

by Karma Tse-ring | On 28 May 2012

Trafficking in Persons: Singapore's Evolving Responses

For a long time, sending countries have been the focus of efforts to combat trafficking in persons (TIP). However, in recent years, destination countries such as Singapore have also stepped up their e...

by Pau Khan Khup Hangzo | On 23 May 2012

Black Money

The objective of this paper is to place in the public domain various facets and dimensions of black money and its complex relationship with the policy and administrative regime in the country. The pa...

by Ministry of Finance | On 22 May 2012

One Planet to Share: Sustaining Human Progress in a Changing Climate

In the run-up to Rio+20, this Asia-Pacific Human Development Report takes a bold look at climate change and what can be done about it. Tackling head-on the issue of poverty reduction and human deve...

by United Nations Development Programme UNDP | On 21 May 2012

Hate Crimes in India: An Economic Analysis of Violence and Atrocities against Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes

Crimes against the historically marginalized Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) by the upper castes in India represent an extreme form of prejudice and discrimination. In this paper, the ef...

by Smriti Sharma | On 16 May 2012

Adolescent Fertility in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Effects and Solutions

Adolescent fertility in low- and middle-income countries presents a severe impediment to development and can lead to school dropout, lost productivity, and the intergenerational transmission of pover...

by Kate McQueston | On 15 May 2012

Role of Communication in Stigma and Discrimination

The objective of the study was to review media coverage (print ) related to HIV/AIDS in three states (Gujarat, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh) in order to determine the gaps in reporting. [CCMG Working Pa...

by Biswajit Das | On 10 May 2012

Dispute Settlement in the WTO, Developing Countries and India

The paper undertakes an examination of the experience of developing countries with dispute settlement vis-à-vis developed countries during the 17 years since the entry into force of the WTO Agreement....

by Anwarul Hoda | On 08 May 2012

Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves

It is conventional wisdom that it is possible to reduce exposure to indoor air pollution, improve health outcomes, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in the rural areas of developing countries thro...

by Rema Hanna | On 03 May 2012

An Assessment of Inflation Modelling in India

This study analyses India’s inflation using the Phillips curve theory. To estimate an open-economy Phillips curve, we need three variables: (1) inflation (2) the output gap and (3) the real effective...

by Karan Singh | On 26 Apr 2012

Liberalisation of Technical Education in Kerala: Has a Significant Increase in Enrolment Translated Into Increase in Supply of Engineers?

Enrolments in engineering in Kerala increased from about 2800 in 1991 to about 28,000 in 2008. The study analyses whether this increase in potential supply of engineers has resulted in actual supply o...

by Sunil Mani | On 25 Apr 2012

Corruption

In this paper, a new framework for analyzing corruption in public bureaucracies is provided. The standard way to model corruption is as an example of moral hazard, which then leads to a focus on bette...

by Abhijit Banerjee | On 24 Apr 2012

Regional Implications of National Reconciliation in Myanmar

The paper examines the implications of Myanmar's reforms for its neighbours- China, India, Thailand and Bangladesh. Issues of major concern to the four countries include energy, humanitarian consequen...

by Lina Gong | On 20 Apr 2012

Draft National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy

The National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy reaffirms the commitment of the Government of India to provide integrated services for holistic development of all children, along the con...

by Government of India Ministry of Women and Child Development | On 20 Apr 2012

Labour Migration and Remittances in Uttarakhand

The type, volume, and mode of transfer of remittances in Uttarakhand is analysed. The impact of remittances, in terms of both financial flows and transfer of new skills and the perceptions in relat...

by Anmol Jain | On 18 Apr 2012

Brides for Sale: Cross-Border Marriages and Female Immigration

Every year, a large number of women immigrate as brides from developing countries to developed countries in East Asia. This phenomenon virtually did not exist in the early 1990s, but foreign brides...

by Daiji Kawaguchi | On 16 Apr 2012

Do Middle Classes Bring Institutional Reforms?

The link between poverty, the middle class and institutional outcomes are analyzed using a newly developed cross-country panel dataset containing detailed information on the distribution of income a...

by Norman Loayza | On 09 Apr 2012

The State of Juvenile Justice in Karnataka

The situation of juveniles in conflict with law and children in need of care and protection across India is precarious. Nothing underlines this more than the situation in Karnataka. While the State Hu...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 05 Apr 2012

Patterns of Labour Market Insecurity in Rural India: A Multidimensional and Multivariate Analysis

Labour market insecurity, recognised as pervasive in rural India, is multi-faceted. This study attempts to fill a gap in the research on key dimensions of labour market insecurity by using the Natio...

by Padmini Desikachar | On 02 Apr 2012

Myanmar’s Ethnic Insurgents: UWSA, KNU and KIO

Since the elections of 2010, Myanmar’s political landscape has changed significantly; the old military junta has officially been dissolved and a new civilian government, led by President Thein Sein,...

by Christopher O’Hara | On 27 Mar 2012

The Conclusion of a Korean Peace Treaty and the U.S. Strategy in the Asia Pacific Region

The current century has witnessed every country locked in a hot race to increase its national power through peaceful development, which made Koreans ever more desirous of peace. But why has the Kore...

by Ho Hak Rim | On 20 Mar 2012

NRHM, GOI, 2012-13

Using government data, this brief reports on NRHM expenditures along the following parameters: a) Overall trends in fund allocation and expenditure: GOI and States, b) Allocation and expenditure...

by Accountability Initiative | On 19 Mar 2012

Ethics of Public Health Interventions: A View from the Frontline

Rural people are deprived even of the basic facilities of medical care. Is this ethical? [6th K R Memorial lecture].

by Yogesh Jain | On 16 Mar 2012

Report of the Expert Group for Modernizaion of Indian Railways

There is in urgent need for modernization and generational Change need to be done in the Indian railways to assure safety, improve productivity, take advantage of advanced technology, respond to ever...

by Ministry of Railways | On 14 Mar 2012

The Union Budget: A Primer

This week, the finance minister presents a statement to Parliament of how much money the central government expects to raise in the next financial year, and how it will spend that money. The budget sp...

by Avinash Celestine | On 12 Mar 2012

Under trial Prisoners: Quicker Trial and Human Rights

Discussion on the human rights violation of under trial prisoners.

by Ranesh Chandra Majumdar | On 06 Mar 2012

Socioeconomic Factors and All Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality among Older People in Latin America, India, and China: A Population-Based Cohort Study

The vital status of 12,373 people aged 65 years and over was determined 3–5 years after baseline survey in sites in Latin America, India, and China. Crude and standardised mortality rates are reporte...

by Cleusa P Ferri | On 05 Mar 2012

The End of the “Liberal Theory of History”? Dissecting the U.S. Congress’ Discourse on China’s Currency Policy

In the last ten years, economic issues related to currency policy have become the major ongoing dispute between China and the U.S. Especially the U.S. Congress is stridently demanding a tougher poli...

by Nicola Nymalm | On 01 Mar 2012

More Money or More Development: What Have the MDGs Achieved?

What have the MDGs achieved? And what might their achievements mean for any second generation of MDGs or MDGs 2.0? We argue that the MDGs may have played a role in increasing aid and that developmen...

by Charles Kenny | On 24 Feb 2012

Sri Lanka Budget Speech 2012

Budget speech 2012.

by Mahinda Rajapaksa | On 24 Feb 2012

Climate Change and Migration in Southeast Asia: Responding to a New Human Security Challenge

The paper aims at understanding the reasons which influence migration and mobility choices, ways by which vulnerabilities can be managed and the role that local, national and regional policy responses...

by Lorraine Elliot | On 24 Feb 2012

Violent Conflict and Human Capital Accumulation

This paper reviews and discusses available empirical research on the impact of violent conflict on the level and access to education of civilian and combatant populations affected by violence. Three ...

by Patricia Justino | On 15 Feb 2012

Whither Human Capital? The Woeful Tale of Transition to Tertiary Education in India

In this paper the issue of high dropout rates in India is examined which has adverse implications for human capital formation, and hence for the country’s long term growth potential. Using the 2004-0...

by Manisha Chakrabarty | On 14 Feb 2012

Economic Growth, Comparative Advantage, and Gender Differences in Schooling Outcomes: Evidence from the Birthweight Differences of Chinese Twins

Data from two surveys of twins in China are used to contribute to an improved understanding of the role of economic development in affecting gender differences in the trends in, levels of, and retur...

by Mark Rosenzweig | On 13 Feb 2012

Aiding Conflict: The Impact of U.S. Food Aid on Civil War

This paper examines the effect of U.S. food aid on conflict in recipient countries (these include Asian countries like Afghanistan, Sri Lanka). To establish a causal relationship, time variation in fo...

by Nathan Nunn | On 08 Feb 2012

Human Rights in Malaysia: Challenges and Constraints in the Malaysian Context

The paper discusses some of the main human rights areas of concern within Malaysia, over the years. [Working Paper Series No. 12]. URL:[http://www.ieas.unimas.my/images/stories/hirmanritom.pdf].

by Mohammad Hirman Ritom Abdullah | On 07 Feb 2012

Consumer Responses to Incentives to Reduce Plastic Bag Use: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Urban India

In this paper a test for appropriate policies is done that could help control the use of plastic bags in Delhi. In January 2009, the Government of Delhi introduced a wide-ranging ban on the use of p...

by Kanupriya Gupta | On 03 Feb 2012

International Competitive Strategy Choices: Comparing Firms in China and India

The international business literature has yet to adequately explore international competitive strategy choices made by firms in developing countries. This study aims to address this gap by investiga...

by Ping Lv | On 02 Feb 2012

Structural and Functional Loss in Restored Wetland Ecosystems

Wetlands, which include tropical mangroves and boreal peatlands, are among the most valuable ecosystems in the world because they provide critical ecosystem goods and services, such as carbon stora...

by David Moreno Mateos | On 01 Feb 2012

Fiscal Policy in India: Trends and Trajectory

This essay examines the trajectory of India?s fiscal policy with a focus on historical trends, fiscal discipline frameworks, fiscal responses to the global financial crisis and subsequent return to a...

by Supriyo De | On 31 Jan 2012

Total Sanitation Campaign - Progress and Issues: Situational Analysis of Andhra Pradesh with reference to Total Sanitation Campaign

This paper has tried to address some key research questions like will India and Andhra Pradesh achieve the Millennium Development Goal of Sanitation ? Are the TSC targets realistic? What is coverage...

by M Snehalatha | On 25 Jan 2012

Faith in Exile: The Lessons of Tibet

For the last half-century, the Tibetan people have endured the brunt of some of the Chinese governments most brutal policies. In the 1990's, an international activist movement, which attracted a small...

by Anthony Lappe | On 25 Jan 2012

India’s Draft Universal Periodic Report-II: A Case of Forced Marriage?

The paper has the objective of viewing the condition of women in terms of freedom of choice, freedom and expression and right of privacy. Also it views violence against women.

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 20 Jan 2012

Second Universal Periodic Review of India-Draft

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a process of the Human Rights Council which involves a review of the human rights records of all 192 UN Member States once every four years. The reviews are cond...

by Ministry of External Affairs, GoI MEA | On 19 Jan 2012

Does Budget Transparency Lead to Stronger Human Development Outcomes and Commitments to Economic and Social Rights?

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between the quality of the budget process and human development outcomes. It looks in particular at at the relationship between the OBI and human d...

by Sakiko Fukuda-Parr | On 17 Jan 2012

Turning the Tide: Improving Water Resource Management in the Philippines

Water is arguably the most important natural resource and because it is scarce, its optimal usage and proper management must be ensured. Water governance in the Philippines, however, has becom...

by Senate Economic Planning Office SEPO | On 03 Jan 2012

Vital Stats: Parliament in 2011

The year in Parliament was characterised by frequent disruptions and protests over a host of issues. The issue of the establishment of a Lokpal prompted both disruption as well as intense debate. A...

by Rohit Kumar | On 02 Jan 2012

The Evolving Dynamics of Global Economic Power in the Post-crisis World: Revelations from a New Index of Government Economic Power

This paper develops an index for measuring the economic power of governments viewed as entities in themselves. The basic idea is to encapsulate the economic representative power of a nation’s governme...

by Kaushik Basu | On 27 Dec 2011

Economic and Financial Developments in Andaman and Nicobar Islands

The Reserve Bank has stepped up its efforts in recent years to enhance the penetration of the formal financial sector and promote financial inclusion with a view to improving the well-being of our soc...

by Deepak Mohanty | On 26 Dec 2011

How Awareness Changes the Relative Weights of Evidence During Human Decision-Making

Human decisions are based on accumulating evidence over time for different options. Here a simple question is asked: How is the accumulation of evidence affected by the level of awareness of the infor...

by Floris P de Lange | On 23 Dec 2011

How Are Markets Made?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the making of markets. The paper identifies two ideal-typical processes in which markets are made – organized making and spontaneous making – which are often...

by Patrik Aspers | On 29 Nov 2011

Impact of the Retail FDI Policy on Indian Consumers and the Way Forward

This paper analyses the impact of the retail FDI policy on Indian consumers and make policy recommendations for the Indian government. Based on a primary survey of Indian consumers, the paper examines...

by Arpita Mukherjee | On 28 Nov 2011

An Estimated DSGE Model of the Indian Economy

A closed model DSGE model of the Indian economy is developed and it is estimated by Bayesian Maximum Likelihood methods using Dynare. A model is build up in stages to with a number of features impo...

by Vasco Gabriel | On 28 Nov 2011

Social Security and Labor Migration in ASEAN

This policy brief takes a preliminary look at portability of social security in ASEAN, particularly old-age, retirement, and survivor benefits. The next section discusses the growth of intra-ASEAN...

by Gloria O. Pasadilla | On 28 Nov 2011

Torture in India 2011

Torture in India series have been instrumental for bringing national and international spotlight on torture in india. The Government of India regrettably has been reluctant to address torture. It draf...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 21 Nov 2011

Development and Health in Poor Countries: Role of Interntional Organizations and Switzerland

The study tries to better understand three fields which seems to be essential with respect to the problem of a facilitated access to medicines : 1. the ambiguous position of intellectual property...

by Bastein Briand | On 17 Nov 2011

Juveniles of Jammu and Kashmir: Unequal Before the Law and Denied Justice in Custody

While the arrests of dozens of juveniles during the mass uprising in the Kashmir valley from June to September 2010 brought the abuse of the Public Safety Act against the children in conflict with the...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 16 Nov 2011

Where is the Virtue in the Middle Class?

It is widely agreed by economists and political scientists that the middle class is vital to progress because of its many virtues. But it is difficult to define a middle class by income in a manner t...

by Charles Kenny | On 16 Nov 2011

Cost Effectiveness of Interactive Radio Instruction Program Karnataka: Basic and Program Cost Effectiveness

The Program CEA extends to the study to an impact analysis of the Radio programs to assess whether the expenditure being made for this intervention is helping the students in improving their learnin...

by Shubhashansha Bakshi | On 16 Nov 2011

Brand India: No Equity for Children

India has embarked upon an economic model driven by the free market incorporating processes of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. Our children today live, in what some describe as “Brand...

by HAQ Centre for Child Rights HAQCRC | On 10 Nov 2011

German Companies Engaging in China: Decision-Making Processes at Home and Management Practices in Chinese Subsidiaries

This paper attempts to explain why internationalization processes to China are growing despite the significant difficulties that foreign direct investments into China encounter. The answer to this q...

by Geny Piotti | On 04 Nov 2011

Economic and Financial Developments in Goa

Goa is celebrating the Golden Jubilee Year of its Liberation. The recent economic achievements of the state are highlighted. The economic and financial structure of the state as well as the various fi...

by Deepak Mohanty | On 04 Nov 2011

Teaching How to Bridge Neuroscience, Society, and Culture

In most universities, sharp disciplinary and departmental divisions continue to this day and have regrettably translated into the life sciences being taught with scarce attention to their historical a...

by Giovanni Frazzetto | On 31 Oct 2011

Transactions Matter but They Hardly Cost: Irrigation Management in the Kathmandu Valley

This study estimates the transaction costs entailed in maintaining Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems (FMIS) in Nepal based on a case study of 60 irrigation systems in the Kathmandu valley. It analyz...

by Ram Chandra Bhattarai | On 18 Oct 2011

Position Paper: National Focus Group on Education of Children with Special Needs

The paper discusses the issues relating to the provisions, practices and curricular concerns for children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). Though SEN may result from a number of factors, in thi...

by National Council of Educational Research &Training NCERT | On 29 Sep 2011

Mitigating Climate Change Through Agriculture

Among the major challenges currently faced by humanity are food security and climate change. Agriculture plays a significant role in both. Adapting to climate change is expected to be an increasing ...

by Claire Schaffnit Chatterjee | On 26 Sep 2011

Gender Inclusion in Climate Change Adaptation

A review of the various issues related to gender and poverty and examine the relationships between gender and various indices, including the human development index (HDI), the gender inequality index...

by Midori Aoyagi | On 22 Sep 2011

Why Worry about How Many Species and Their Loss?

We are astonishingly ignorant about how many species are alive on earth today, and even more ignorant about how many we can lose yet still maintain ecosystem services that humanity ultimately depen...

by Robert M May | On 19 Sep 2011

The National Food Security Bill, 2011

A Bill to provide for food and nutritional security, in human life cycle approach, by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices, for people to live a life with dign...

by Department of Food and Public Distribution Fcamin | On 14 Sep 2011

Market Dynamics in Supply Chains: The Impact of Globalisation and Consolidation on Food Companie's Mark-ups

This paper examines whether ownership and increased competitive pressure affect food retailers’ market power, analysing whether all actors involved in the food supply chain deviate from the pricing be...

by Eleni A Kaditi | On 29 Aug 2011

Indian Social Democracy: The Resource Perspective

This paper examines the strategy for obtaining adequate resources for the Indian State, where the goals of the State comprise the provision of public goods (which, by de nition, bene t everyone) and...

by P.V. Srinivasan | On 24 Aug 2011

Trade in Services and Human Development: A First Look at the Links

Some services directly produce outputs that are important for human development, such as basic human services. Many other services are important inputs into the production and distribution of goods th...

by Ben Shepherd | On 24 Aug 2011

Climate Change, Rural Livelihoods and Agriculture (focus on Food Security) in Asia-Pacific Region

The objective of this paper is to identify climate change related threats and vulnerabilities associated with agriculture as a sector and agriculture as people’s livelihoods (exposure, sensitivity, a...

by S. Mahendra Dev | On 17 Aug 2011

Multidimensional Indices of Achievements and Poverty: What Do We Gain and What and What Do We Lose?

Poverty and well-being are multidimensional. Nobody questions that deprivations and achievements go beyond income. There is, however, sharp disagreement on whether the various dimensions of poverty...

by Nora Lustig | On 11 Aug 2011

Darwin in Mind: New Opportunities for Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology (EP) views the human mind as organized into many modules, each underpinned by psychological adaptations designed to solve problems faced by our Pleistocene ancestors. It...

by Johan J Bolhuis | On 09 Aug 2011

Configuring Balanced Scorecards for Measuring Health System Performance: Evidence from 5 Years’ Evaluation in Afghanistan

In 2004, Afghanistan pioneered a balanced scorecard (BSC) performance system to manage the delivery of primary health care services. This study examines the trends of 29 key performance indicators ov...

by Edward Anbrasi | On 04 Aug 2011

India’s Low Carbon Inclusive Growth Strategy

This paper reviews India.s low-carbon high growth inclusive policy initiatives, comments on their financial sustainability and environmental sustainability and suggests desirable changes. The focus...

by U. Sankar | On 29 Jul 2011

Government Mediated Program on Intensifying Industry-Academia Linkages for Human Resource Development; Experinces of an Innovative Model from TIFAC

The importance of academia- industry linkages for development of an economy is well recognized. With a view to make the higher technical education relevant, by forging and catalyzing functional link...

by Jancy Ayyaswamy | On 26 Jul 2011

Deprivation and Vulnerability Among Elderly in India

A documentation of different aspects of human deprivation in the old age other than the measurement of income poverty is done. Aspects of economic, health and social aspects of deprivation and how i...

by Syam Prasad | On 14 Jul 2011

The Don Sahong Dam: Potential Impacts on Regional Fish Migrations, Livelihoods and Human Health

This paper focuses on the Don Sahong Dam (DSD’s) potential impacts on fish and fisheries, and particularly the project’s regional implications in relation to fisheries, including its possible impact...

by Ian Bird | On 08 Jul 2011

Human Trafficking: The Shameful Face of Migration

A new framework for understanding migration as a series of phases, defining categories of people affected by migration and suggesting estimates of the likely size and importance of each group is g...

by PLoS Medicine Editors | On 04 Jul 2011

Satoyama–Satoumi Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Assessing Trends to Rethink a Sustainable Future

The Japan Satoyama Satoumi Assessment (JSSA) is a study of the interaction between humans and terrestrial–aquatic ecosystems (satoyama) and marine– coastal ecosystems (satoumi) in Japan. The stud...

by Anantha Kumar Duraiappah | On 17 Jun 2011

WRR: Special Focus on Restoring the Flow

The June issue of World Rivers Review is overflowing with ideas on on how to maintain healthy flows in rivers, for their health and our own. If a river's flow is its heartbeat, then we humans have bec...

by International Rivers Network IRN | On 13 Jun 2011

A Human Development Approach to the Status of Development in North East India

The development and growth of a nation greatly depends upon proper utilization of its human resources. To utilize these resources, there is a need to convert human beings into human resources. Since...

by P. Nayak | On 13 Jun 2011

Demand or Supply for Schooling in Rural India?

Is the poor human capital investment by rural Indian families primarily a supply side or a demand side issue? This paper examines school attendance and total human capital investment time (time in sc...

by Sripad Motiram | On 13 Jun 2011

Trends in Poverty and Social Indicators: An Update

This paper provides an update of the changes that Bangladesh has undergone in terms of its poverty and social indicators over the last one and a half decades. Several key social and human developmen...

by Zulfiqar Ali | On 07 Jun 2011

Book Review: Ineffable or Not: Understanding and Writing about Sri Aurobindo

Review of The Lives of Sri Aurobindo Peter Heehs. Columbia University Press, New York 2008. xiv + 496 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-14098-0. [ https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=32846...

by Hanna H. Kim | On 05 Jun 2011

Aid Supplies Over Time: Accounting for Heterogeneity, Trends, and Dynamics

The recent financial crisis has rekindled interest in the foreign aid supply behaviour of bilateral donors. Using the latest data covering the period 1960-2009, this paper examines how such behaviou...

by Sam Jones | On 01 Jun 2011

Demand or Supply for Schooling in Rural India?

Is the poor human capital investment by rural Indian families primarily a supply side or a demand side issue? School attendance and total human capital investment time (time in school plus travel ti...

by Sripad Motiram | On 01 Jun 2011

Closure for the Sraffa System: A Theory of Value, Distribution and Growth

The purpose of this paper is to pursue the implications of closing, in the sense of rendering determinate, the Sraffa equations of production, prices and distribution [Sraffa (1960)] by adding to th...

by Rajas Parchure | On 01 Jun 2011

Social Assistance and the ‘Dependency Syndrome'

This policy brief discusses the fact that social assistance is critical to counter the insecurity and vulnerability experienced by chronically poor people. Evidence shows that as well as preventing pe...

by Andrew Shepherd | On 30 May 2011

On Harnessing Natural Resources for Sustainable Development

The mainstream economics has characteristically been myopic in visualizing the relationship between human beings and the ecosphere, the surrounding in which they live, work and prosper. Man though...

by SK Mishra | On 23 May 2011

Women and the Right to Livelihood

This report provides an overview of the Women and Livelihoods events held by PWESCR in collaboration with organisations involved in the Gender Equality Coalition of the Human Dignity and Human Rights...

by PCESC R | On 20 May 2011

What Determines the Academic and Professional Participation of Economists?

A casual overview of rankings of economics departments and economists conducted by Internet Documents in Economics Access Service (IDEAS) would reveal that economists of some countries participat...

by S.K. Mishra | On 17 May 2011

Spatial Heterogeneity and Population Mobility in India

Mobility is one of the important aspects of human nature, which is often guided by socio-economic, political as well as environmental factors. The nature, pattern and direction of population mobili...

by Jajati Keshari Parida | On 16 May 2011

Migrant Nightclub/Escort Workers in Hong Kong: An Analysis of Possible Human Rights Abuses

The paper is part of a broader study of the human rights of women who migrate or are trafficked to Hong Kong for the purposes of working in the commercial sex industry. The study is being conduct...

by Robyn Emerton | On 12 May 2011

Children and Human Rights

Essay on the subject. In Gujarati [Gyansadhana 2009-10]

by Falguni B. Vahanwala | On 09 May 2011

South Asians for Human Rights' Minority Right Reports (India 2009)

This paper presents the condition of minority in India in the year 2009. URL: [http://www.southasianrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Minority-Right-Situation-in-India.pdf]

by South Asians for Human Rights | On 09 May 2011

A Note on Human Development Indices with Income Equalities

In this study the DAPCHDI with the data given by Sarker et al. in their paper is re-computed to compare the composite index with theirs. The HDR-2005 or the HDR-2006 adds little to the HDR-2004 da...

by S.K. Mishra | On 06 May 2011

Which Type of Stove is Best? An Environmental Impact Assessment from Nepal

This study investigates whether the type of cook stove a household uses has an impact on its level of firewood use. Not surprisingly, the study finds that households with traditional mud stoves use...

by Mani Nepal | On 05 May 2011

Nepal and the Pax Indianus

In May 2009, the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) warned of growing threats to sustainable peace in Nepal. Since that time, Nepal’s politics have continued to polarize. Nepal still has two ar...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights | On 04 May 2011

Bucking Tobacco Sponsorship at Rodeos: Strategies for Media Advocacy and Public Engagement

This paper attempts to explore a media advocacy plan to counter the aggressive marketing by the tobacco industry at family sporting events, and to shift the focus from current arguments that frame tob...

by Berkeley Media Studies Group | On 02 May 2011

Toward Results-Based Social Policy Design and Implementation

This paper analyzes some of the elements that cause the apparent perception in the realm of social policy, and in particular in the case of poverty alleviation and education policies in developing ...

by Miguel Székely | On 02 May 2011

Guidelines for Human-Leopard Conflict Management

After careful consideration of the inputs received from a variety of stakeholders, the following framework guidelines are suggested for managing the humanleopard conflict situations in areas where l...

by Ministry of Environment and Forests GOI | On 22 Apr 2011

How to Read the Budget

This note is intended as a brief guide on how the budget papers are organised, and how to find the exact information that a reader wants (expenditure on a particular scheme of interest, or total budge...

by Avinash Celestine | On 12 Apr 2011

Declining Child Sex Ratio: Addressing the Imperatives

A discussion about the declining sex ratio in India is given. The various reasons for declining sex ratio are outlined.

by Anwesha Sen | On 09 Apr 2011

Status of the Reservation to the Right to Vote in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong government continues to invoke the 1976 reservation to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) entered by the United Kingdom government in relation to Hong Kong....

by Seren S.T. Tang | On 29 Mar 2011

Globalization and the Women’s Movement in India

From the early 1990s, the principal economic, social and political problems experienced by the mass of Indian women have, in one way or another, become inextricably linked with the processes and pol...

by Centre for Women's Development Studies | On 28 Mar 2011

Misalignment of Renminbi Exchange Rate Revaluation: Estimation and Implications

For the past several years, the revaluation of the renminbi has been a hot topic among policymakers and economists as well as market participants inside and outside the PRC against the background of i...

by Zhijun Zhao | On 23 Mar 2011

Social and Economic Policies to Prevent Complex Humanitarian Emergencies Lessons from Experience

In simple language and with numerous concrete examples, this policy brief analyses the impact - among others - of key ex-ante factors such as acute 'horizontal inequality' between social groups in the...

by Jeni Klugman | On 22 Mar 2011

A ‘Lawless Law’: Detentions under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act

Hundreds of people are locked up on spurious grounds under the Public Safety Act in Jammu and Kashmir every year. This report exposes a catalogue of human rights violations associated with the use of...

by Amnesty International AI, | On 21 Mar 2011

Trade in Services and Human Development: A First Look at the Links.

Some services directly produce outputs that are important for human development, such as basic human services. Many other services are important inputs into the production and distribution of goods th...

by Ben Shepherd | On 21 Mar 2011

Can We Eradicate Hunger?

World hunger is prevalent yet receives relatively less attention compared to poverty. The MDGs have taken a step to address this with the resolution of halving the number of starving people in the wor...

by Basudeb Guha Khasnobis | On 16 Mar 2011

Environment, Human Development and Economic Growth after Liberalisation: An Analysis of Indian States

Economic growth does not necessarily ensure environmental sustainability for a country. The relationship between the two is far more complicated for developing countries like India, given the depend...

by Sacchidananda Mukherjee | On 16 Mar 2011

Stimulus, Recovery and Exit Policy G20 Experience and Indian Strategy

There are large variations among the G20 countries in their deceleration experiences, transmission mechanisms and their current macroeconomic outlook. Hence, this paper argues that each country nee...

by Sudipto Mundle | On 14 Mar 2011

Health and Human Rights in Chin State, Western Burma: A Population-Based Assessment Using Multistaged Household Cluster Sampling

The Chin State of Burma (also known as Myanmar) is an isolated ethnic minority area with poor health outcomes and reports of food insecurity and human rights violations. A report on a population-base...

by Richard Sollom | On 09 Mar 2011

Draft of The Animal Welfare Act, 2011

Comments can be sent to animalwelfareact2011@gmail.com by March 20, 2011.

by Ministry of Environment and Forests GOI | On 07 Mar 2011

Failed States, Vicious Cycles, and a Proposal

The problems of failed states, including the repeated return to power of former warlords are examined. It is argued that this causes institutions to become weaker and people to get poorer. It is argue...

by Raghuram G. Rajan | On 04 Mar 2011

The Sudoku of Growth, Poverty and Malnutrition: Policy Implications for Lagging States

There is a view favoured by anti-globalisation activists, left economists and the global/international socialists that faster growth in India has not reduced poverty. A sub-set of these personalitie...

by Arvind Virmani | On 04 Mar 2011

The Uses of Economic Theory: Against a Purely Positive Interpretation of Theoretical Results

Economists are excessively influenced by the so-called positive economics view, which says that economists should only describe and not prescribe. Here the author argue that this view is flawed beca...

by Abhijit V. Banerjee | On 04 Mar 2011

Governance in Indonesia:Some Comments

Governance is often a difficult process. Proper governance ideally involves formulating an overall strategy of operations, translating this strategy into specific policies and decisions, and then im...

by Peter McCawley | On 03 Mar 2011

BMC Budget 2011-12

Budget presented to Municipal Commissioner

by Municipal Commissioner BMC | On 01 Mar 2011

Macroeconomic Forecasting using Dynamic Factor Models

This study attempts to develop a dynamic factor model (DFM) to forecast industrial production and price level in India. For this purpose, domestic as well as external economic indicators, that appea...

by Sanjib Bordoloi | On 21 Feb 2011

Emerging Issues for Regional Cooperation in Asia-Pacific

Dynamic human resources are one of the dominant factors for developing countries (DMCs) to achieve sustainable economic growth. Donors, including the ADB, are eager to help teach DMC policymakers ho...

by Toshiki Kanamori | On 21 Feb 2011

Indian Social Democracy:The Resource perspective

This paper examines the strategy for obtaining adequate resources for the Indian State, where the goals of the State comprise the provision of public goods (which, by defi nition, benefi t everyone)...

by Vijay Kelkar | On 17 Feb 2011

Some Aspects of Inter District Disparities in Tamil Nadu

The study analyzes the inter-district variations in levels of income and human development in Tamal Nadu in recent years. It also tries to analyze the causes of the relatively low levels of income of...

by R. J. Chelliah | On 15 Feb 2011

Towards Universal, Comprehensive and Equitable National Health Systems: The 22 Years Brazilian Experience in its Context

The presentation outlines the 22 years of Brazilian experience in of evolving a comprehensive health care strategy

by Armando De Negri Filho | On 10 Feb 2011

Understanding the Kole Lands in Kerala as A Multiple Use Wetland Ecosystem

Wetlands which face several anthropogenic and other threats are complex ecosystems providing substantial benefits to human society. This paper is an attempt to understand the ecological and economic...

by Jeena T Srinivasan | On 09 Feb 2011

Women's Movements Engagement With the Law: Existing Contradictions and Emerging Challenges

Through over a century-long history, the women’s movement in India has been engaged with law as an instrument with which to negotiate women’s rights. To a great extent this strategy has been successf...

by Centre for Women's Development Studies | On 31 Jan 2011

Development Strategies: Lessons from the Experiences of South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam

This piece synthesizes the development strategies of Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam and draws some relevant lessons. Using a complex adaptive systems approach, strategic openness, a set of...

by Haider A. Khan | On 27 Jan 2011

Rethinking the Policy Objectives of Development Aid: From Economic Growth to Conflict Prevention

The current consensus objective of development aid in the international community is to reduce poverty in general and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in particular. In addition,...

by Sakiko Fukuda- Parr | On 21 Jan 2011

An Approach to Communication and Social Change: How Communications Can Build Social Capital for the Ultra Poor

BRAC’s Advocacy and Human Rights Unit (BAHRU) has developed a social communications programme that goes beyond traditional approaches of marketing communications. The goal of the programme is long-t...

by Jeneviève Mann ell | On 03 Jan 2011

Profitability of BRAC-financed Projects: A Study of Seven Microenterprises in Matlab

The basic objective of this study was to look at the profit rates made by VO members once they have made investments in projects financed through BRAC loans. BRAC’s twin objectives of employment and ...

by Hassan Zaman | On 28 Dec 2010

The Two Cultures Revisited: Some Reflections on the Environment-Development Debate in India

The speech is mainly about the "two cultures” (modern society—the cultures of the science and that of the humanities) syndrome—the apparent gap between those espousing the case for faster economic g...

by Jairam Ramesh | On 23 Dec 2010

The Withdrawal of OHCHR-Nepal: Agreeing an Alibi for Violation?

On 9th June 2010 the mandate of the UN human rights field mission to Nepal, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Nepal (OHCHR-Nepal), expires. The Prime Minister MK Nepal has said t...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 22 Dec 2010

Revisiting Group Dynamic and Legal Rights

BRAC Human Rights and Legal Services Programme (HRLS) has initiated to form ward-based Legal Rights Implementation Committee (LRIC) comprised of 19 members to ensure justice for the vulnerable women...

by Debasish Kumar Kundu | On 14 Dec 2010

The Future of Financial Liberalization in South Asia

The paper defines financial liberalization, distinguishing between liberalization of domestic financial markets and capital account convertibility. It then examines the stages and the strategy of Ind...

by Ashima Goyal | On 14 Dec 2010

Access to Utilities by the Poor

This paper presents a global perspective on infrastructure coverage and the poor that many people will think they have seen before but they have not. In this paper they introduce a new data source for...

by Kristin Komives | On 08 Dec 2010

Composite Indices of Human Well-being: Past, Present, and Future

This paper surveys the various composite well-being indices that have been inter-country assessments over the last 40 or soy ears, including the well known Human Development Index (HDI). A number of...

by Mark McGillivray | On 03 Dec 2010

Contemporary lessons in Economic Philosophy drawn from two recent Indian Films

The aim of this paper is to derive some important lessons in economic philosophy from two recent Indian films. The two films, Mani Ratnam’s Guru (2007) and Madhur Bhandarkar’s Corporate (2006), are...

by Tejas A Desai | On 29 Nov 2010

Economic Agendas in Civil Wars: What We Know, What We Need to Know

The political economy of civil wars has acquired unprecedented scholarly and policy attention. Among others, the International Peace Academy’s programme on Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (EACW) ha...

by David M Malone | On 26 Nov 2010

Aid, Public Sector Fiscal Behaviour and Developing Country Debt

This paper looks at public sector debt in developing countries, being concerned specifically with the relationship between aid inflows and the public sector borrowing requirement net of aid loans. A...

by Simon Feeny | On 17 Nov 2010

Regional Heterogeneity and Fertility Behaviour in India

This paper examines regional heterogeneity both from statistical and cartographic perspectives, using factor analysis of non-demographic data, models of fertility determinants and district-wise mapp...

by Christophe Z. Guilmoto | On 11 Nov 2010

Human Capital, Labour Productivity and Employment

This paper analyses the importance of human capital in determining the inter-state differences in labour productivity and its growth in India. The paper also examines the impact of human capital d...

by Savita Bhat | On 01 Nov 2010

Human Capital and Development: A Tale of Two Cities--Software Sector in Hyderabad and Bangalore

This paper discusses the factors that promote clusters and the role of clusters in the generation and spread of human capital The analysis in the paper is based on a comparative study of software fir...

by V. N. Balasubramanyam | On 29 Oct 2010

Does Change in S & T Explain Dynamics in Human Capital? An enquiry into Emerging Trends in Nursing Labour Market

We examine why it is important to consider seemingly autonomous but more embedded socio-political-economic aspects in assessing the impact of changes in Science and Technology (S&T) on human capital...

by Bino Paul G.D | On 29 Oct 2010

ASEAN Open Skies and the Implications for Airport Development Strategy in Malaysia

“Open Skies,” in general, refers to the liberalization of aviation markets that can be pursued on a bilateral, regional, or multilateral basis. At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)...

by Siew Yean Tham | On 29 Oct 2010

The International Mobility of Talent and its Impact on Global Development

Human talent is a key economic resource and a source of creative power in science, technology, business, arts and culture and other activities. Talent has a large economic value and its mobility...

by Andrés Solimano | On 21 Oct 2010

Drug Companies Should Be Held More Accountable for Their Human Rights Responsibilities

The PLoS Medicine Editors argue that drug companies should be held much more accountable for their human rights responsibilities

by PLoS Medicine | On 20 Oct 2010

Collective Values, Behavioural Norms and Rules Building Institutions for Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction

Economic growth and poverty reduction require for a country to establish efficient rules for economic and political transactions. Poor countries suffer from inadequate, inefficient transaction rules...

by Ke-young Chu | On 12 Oct 2010

The Impact of Free Trade Agreements on Business Activity: A Survey of Firms in the People's Republic of China

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has emerged as a major player in the global economy and considers free trade agreements (FTAs) an important part of its global trading strategy. The PRC’s export i...

by Yunling Zhang | On 12 Oct 2010

Towards an Economic Approach to Sustainable Forest Development

The present paper looks at the various dimensions of contributions by forests in the context of the Indian economy. Based on a detailed review of literature on importance and valuation of forests, s...

by Archana S Mathur | On 08 Oct 2010

Aid to Fragile States: Do Donors Help or Hinder?

The record of aid to fragile and poorly-performing states is the real test of aid effectiveness. Rich countries can justify aid to fragile states both through altruism and self-interest. But, wit...

by Stephen Browne | On 06 Oct 2010

Games the State Plays: A Follow–up Report on the Violations of Workers' Rights in CWG-related Construction Sites

For the last few years , a massive amount of construction work has been going on in various parts of Delhi for the Commonwealth Games (CWG) to be held in October this year. PUDR tried to conduct a fac...

by People's Union for Democratic Rights PUDR | On 01 Oct 2010

The Returns to English-Language Skills in India

India's colonial legacy and linguistic diversity give English an important role in its economy, and this role has expanded due to globalization in recent decades. It is widely believed that there are...

by Mehtabul Azam | On 26 Sep 2010

Working Group on Development of Children for the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012): (Volume One)

Nineteen per cent of world’s children live in India. India is home to more than one billion people, of which 42 per cent are children, defined as persons under 18 years of age. In international co...

by Government of India Ministry of Women and Child Development | On 17 Sep 2010

Regulation in Health Care in Tamil Nadu (India): A study of the Implementation of Transplantation of Human Organs Act (THOA) 1994, and Consumer Protection Act (CPA) 1986

The functioning of healthcare sector could be substantially influenced by the design and implementation of regulatory policies that govern the behaviour of various stakeholders. The empirical challe...

by Vangal R Muraleedharan | On 16 Sep 2010

Dignity on Trial

The report discusses the problems posed by one of the most archaic forensic procedures still in use: the finger test. [CEHAT].

by Human Rights Watch | On 15 Sep 2010

Human Dilemma of Technological Progress: Women, Technology and Employment

Science and technology have continuously enlarged the frontiers of human knowledge, growth and development. The issue which keeps surfacing time and again and needs to be addressed while planning ou...

by Kumud Sharma | On 15 Sep 2010

Disarticulation of Indegenous People: Can the Judiciary Saviour Them

The paper aims at bringing out and explaining the problems faced by tribals. The paper also analyzes various laws made for protecting the tribals and giving them justice.

by Ketan Mukhija | On 03 Sep 2010

Book Review: Promoting Economic Cooperation in South Asia

Review of 'Promoting Economic Cooperation in South Asia'; S. Ahmed, S. Kalegama and E. Ghani (Editors). Published by Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2010

by Sandhya S . Iyer | On 17 Aug 2010

The Economics of Human Cloning

In this paper, we analyze the extent to which market forces create an incentive for cloning human beings. We show that a market for cloning arises if a large enough fraction of the clone’s income ca...

by Gilles Saint Paul | On 13 Aug 2010

FDI and Human Capital Development

This paper explains importance of human capital skilling, the relation between the FDI and Human Capital development besides the experiences of these two in different regions of the world i.e., Asian...

by P. Srinivas Subbarao | On 04 Aug 2010

Speeding Up the Estimation of Expected Maximum Flows Through Reliable Networks

In this paper we present a strategy for speeding up the estimation of expected maximum flows through reliable networks. Our strategy tries to minimize the repetition of computational effort while ev...

by Megha Sharma | On 23 Jul 2010

Not Just Mad Englishmen and a Dog: The Colonial Tuning of 'Music on Record', 1900-1908

The paper excavates how the advent of commercial audiography, through 'Recording Expeditions' between 1902 and 1907, shaped configurations of the nascent business in, and culture around, 'music on rec...

by Vibodh Parthasarathi | On 16 Jun 2010

Health Seeking Behaviour And Delays In Diagnosis And Treatment In Patients Reporting With Cough Of Three Weeks Or More To Tuberculosis Units & Microscopy Centres In East Sikkim

The objective of this paper is to study the health seeking behaviour in patients reporting with cough of 3 weeks or more to Tuberculosis Units & Microscopy Centres in East District of Sikkim and to...

by Karma Jigme Tobgay | On 11 Jun 2010

Affordability to Finance Poverty Reduction Programmes

This paper addresses the question of affordability to finance poverty reduction programs in a dynamic context. In doing so, it stresses the need for approaching the problem from a human rights perspec...

by Omar Haider Chowdhury | On 04 Jun 2010

Gender Development Indicators: Issues, Debates and Ranking of Districts

The present study emphasizes on independent variable analysis in assessing gender development at the disaggregated district level to account for problems such as the major contradiction facing this c...

by Preet Rustagi | On 03 Jun 2010

Transcending Boundaries: Indian Nurses in Internal and International Migration

This paper discusses the case of Indian nurses who take up their profession as part of a family strategy, where planning for education and migration are intrinsic to the whole process. In effect, th...

by Sreelekha Nair | On 03 Jun 2010

The Economics of Adaptation to Extreme Weather Events in Developing Countries

Without a better understanding of the interactions between international players, households and public sector, it will be difficult for climate negotiators and donor institutions to determine the...

by Brian Blankespoor | On 01 Jun 2010

Civil Conflict and Human Capital Accumulation: The Long Term Effects of Political Violence in Perú

This paper provides empirical evidence of the long- and short-term effects of political violence exposure on human capital accumulation. Using a novel data set that registers all the violent acts an...

by Gianmarco Leon | On 27 May 2010

Cultures of Transport: Representation, Practice and Technology

It is argue that the so-called cultural‘ (and spatial‘) turn that has remodelled so many other areas of the humanities and social sciences over the last two decades might help answer Armstrong‘s plea...

by Colin Divall | On 21 May 2010

Planning for Human Settlements in India-Spatial Perspective

This paper examines the basis upon which rural and urban areas are classified as such. It looks into various criteria for the above all over the world and re-iterates the Indian definition of an ‘urba...

by V.K. Dhar | On 22 Mar 2010

Determinants of the Choice of Migration Destination

This paper examines migrants choice of destination conditional on migration. To this end, an empirical strategy is designed which remedies both migration selection and unobserved heterogeneity probl...

by Marcel Fafchamps | On 18 Mar 2010

Karnataka Budget 2010-11

Budget speech by finance minister of Karnataka

by Government of Karnataka GoK | On 05 Mar 2010

Prevalence and Costs of Childhood Diarrhoea in the Slums of Dhaka

This study seeks to identify the engineering, behavioural and socio-economic determinants of childhood diarrhoea and its duration and to compute the resulting costs borne by slum dwellers. The study...

by M. Jahangir Alam | On 22 Feb 2010

Migration of Health Care Professionals from India: A Case Study of Nurses

The study attempts to examine why there is staff shortage of health care professionals especially the nurses in India and the impact of such migration on services like emergency preparedness, quality...

by Ann Issac | On 04 Feb 2010

Human Resources for Health: Requirements and Availability in the Context of Scaling-Up Priority Interventions in Low-Income Countries

The purpose of this study was to explore the role and importance of human resources for the scaling up of health services in low income countries. In the case studies, the following have been analyze...

by Christoph Kurowski | On 28 Jan 2010

Snakes, Ladders and Traps: Changing Lives and Livelihoods in Rural Bangladesh (1994-2001)

This paper examines national-level explanations for poverty decline in Bangladesh in micro-level detail, in order to better understand the nature of the causalities at work and why some households h...

by Naila Kabeer | On 28 Jan 2010

Mortality, Human Capital and Persistent Inequality

Available evidence suggests high intergenerational correlation of economic status, and persistent disparities in health status between the rich and the poor. This paper proposes a novel mechanism li...

by Shankha Chakraborty | On 19 Jan 2010

Japan’s Foreign Direct Investment Experiences in India: Lessons Learnt from Firm Level Surveys

The paper first gives a brief history and comparison of Japanese foreign direct investment into India and other Asian countries, highlighting the fact that Japanese investment into India is quite lo...

by Srabani Roy Choudhury | On 19 Jan 2010

Key Copenhagen Messages

Climate change is one of the most important issues of the next decades and has the potential to severely impact societies, economies and human wellbeing.

by Caio Koch-Weser | On 16 Dec 2009

A Marketing Scheme for Making Money off Innocent People: A User’s Manual

Firms often give away free goods with the product that they sell. Firms often give stock options to their top management and other employees. Mixing these two practices—giving stock options to consu...

by Kaushik Basu | On 15 Dec 2009

The Challenges of Conducting a Humanitarian Response: A Report on the Post-Floods Situation in Mahbubnagar District

Composite Report on the Pilot Visit to Severely Affected Areas of Mahbubnagar District of Andhra Pradesh

by Samrat Sinha | On 02 Dec 2009

Literacy Traps: Society-wide Education and Individual Skill Premia

Using a model of O-ring production function, the paper demonstrates how certain communities can get caught in a low-literacy trap in which each individual finds it not worthwhile investing in higher...

by Vidya Atal | On 01 Dec 2009

Flying with the Crane-Recapturing KMVS’s Ten-Year Journey

This document is at the behest of KMVS and is an effort to hold up a mirror to their journey. It is a documentation of their history, context, evolution, and experiences since its emergence in 1989. A...

by Vimala Ramachandran | On 01 Dec 2009

Innovation through Long-distance Conversations? Lessons from Offshoring-based Software Clusters in Bangalore

This paper is aganist the popular assertion regarding the links between innovation and clustering and it is found that the main sources of knowledge transfer and innovation among key firms in Bangalor...

by Aya Okada | On 23 Nov 2009

Gender, Poverty And Development: Gender Sensitive Budgeting And Other 'Best Practices'

The dominance of the mainstream paradigm of growth is being increasingly superseded by the Sustainable Human Development approach. No Concept of development, however, can be complete unless and until...

by Ritu Dewan | On 20 Nov 2009

Gendering Human Development Indices: Recasting the Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure of India

Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) developed by UNDP need to be recast to realistically capture the gender gaps in development and empowerment in the Third Wo...

by Government of India Ministry of Women and Child Development | On 10 Nov 2009

2 headaches, 1 solution

The government simply has to find a way to deliver the basics. That is what will defeat the Maoists and hold off China.

by T.N. Ninan | On 27 Oct 2009

Crash Boom Bang: Second Hand Car Imports in India

The paper analyzes and enumerates the various causes for accidents in Delhi and also suggests possible solution solution to counter the problem and bring down accident rates.

by Arjun Bhattacharya | On 21 Oct 2009

How Sapient is Homo Economicus? The Evolutionary Origins of Trade, Ethics and Economic Rationality

The paper argues that economism and, in particular, the individual drive to maximize utility and amass profit are not enough to ensure the efficient functioning of an economy; and that even for elemen...

by Kaushik Basu | On 09 Oct 2009

The Place of Nature in Economic Development

Review of the most salient issues in ecological economics when the subject is applied to the field of economic development. The aim here has not been to be scholastic but to examine the lives of the...

by Partha Dasgupta | On 06 Oct 2009

Emerging Asia's Middle Class-A Force to be Reckoned With

The emergence of a large and dynamic middle class raises Asia’s profile as an attractive market destination for products ranging from consumer goods to financial services. There are even hopes that th...

by Steffen Dyck | On 06 Oct 2009

Civil War: A Review of Fifty Years of Research

A review of several decades of scholarship on civil war, focusing on the answers to key questions: Why do wars begin? Who fights? How are armed groups organized? How can we end and prevent internal wa...

by Christopher Blattman | On 05 Oct 2009

Assessing the Impact of Fiscal Policy on Poverty

Fiscal policy measures are a key means by which governments can influence distribution and poverty, but in fact the relationships between fiscal policy and poverty are not well understood. The most c...

by Andrew McKay | On 05 Oct 2009

Are Gender Differentials in Educational Capabilities Mediated through Institutions of Caste and Religion in India?

In this paper, with empirical data, the Capabilities Approach to identify 'conversion factors' that are not typically addressed in the utility approach is used. The two approaches are juxtaposed to...

by Jeemol Unni | On 01 Oct 2009

Estimating Health Benefits When Behaviours are Endogenous: A Case of Indoor Pollution in Rural Nepal

The effects of indoor air pollution on respiratory health after adjusting for endogenous health behaviours are estimated. The study includes measurements on indoor air pollution and is based on detail...

by Krishna Prasad Pant | On 17 Sep 2009

Chronic Poverty and Development Policy in Sri Lanka: Overview Study

The present study attempts to capture chronic poverty in Sri Lanka by examining general information on poverty and drawing conclusions on those who are likely to be among the chronic poor. Certain p...

by Indra Tudawe | On 17 Sep 2009

Can ‘Beautiful’ Be ‘Backward’? India’s Tribes in a Long-Term Demographic Perspective

The paper examines the present condition of tribals in India with a demographic perspective. Construction of a long-term demographic perspective on India’s tribal population rests on the premise...

by Arup Maharatna | On 28 Aug 2009

Technology, Financial Inclusion and Role of Urban Cooperative Banks

The focus should be to simplify the technology which can operate on any platform. The technology solution to the business needs should be user-friendly without much third-party or IT vendor interventi...

by Chakrabarty K C | On 11 Aug 2009

Ethics Without Borders

The authors shows the problems that can arise when research is done in the context of humanitarian relief work and also notes that ethical oversight of such research needs to be rigorous, but also pra...

by Plos medicine Editors | On 06 Aug 2009

Policies and Strategies for Radioactive Waste Management

The spent fuel and radioactive waste management strategy sets out the means for achieving the goals and requirements set out in the national policy. It is normally established by the relevant waste...

by International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA | On 04 Aug 2009

Clean Water Should Be Recognized as a Human Right

Access to clean water should be declared a basic human right for three reasons. First, access to clean water can substantially reduce the global burden of disease caused by water-borne infections. Sec...

by PLoS Medicine | On 09 Jul 2009

Human Development Index for Andhra Pradesh

The method used to measure Human Development are reviewed in order to measure Human Development Index for rural AP by considering indicators such as economic attainment, longevity and education. The e...

by Jatinder S Bedi | On 07 Jul 2009

Rise of the ‘Posthumanities’: Exit, the Human…Pursued by a Cyborg

The Humanities in the 21st century has to contend with both critique and context. It has to account as an anthropocentric, imperial discipline that not only privileged the human over other forms of...

by Pramod K. Nayar | On 25 Jun 2009

An Alternative Approach to Measure HDI

The popularly known Human Development Index (HDI) is obtained through linear averaging (LA) of indices in three dimensions- health, education and standard of living. This paper questions the appropria...

by Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan | On 16 Jun 2009

Lessons from the Laureates

This paper uses as source material twenty-three autobiographical essays by Nobel economists presented since 1984 at Trinity University (San Antonio, Texas) and published in Lives of the Laureates (MIT...

by William Breit | On 11 Jun 2009

Mexican Swine Flu—A New Threat to Humanity

The article provides information pertaining to the recent outbreak of "swine flu", which has spread beyond Mexico and the US. The present study shows that the outbreak has lot to do with industrial fa...

by Shambhu Ghatak | On 09 Jun 2009

Technical Note on Employment for the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007 – 2012)

This 'Technical Note on Employment for the Eleventh Five Year Plan' presents the quantitative basis for determining the targets and projections on employment, and the related variables given in the El...

by Planning Commission Labour, Employment & Manpower Division | On 06 Jun 2009

Initiatives of NGOs in Kutch Region

Many NGOs occupy a space between public and private sector organisations, and the papers in this special issue demonstrate that the mechanisms required for effective accountability by these NGOs are u...

by Kalpana C Satija | On 06 Jun 2009

The Impact of Education Policy Reforms on the School System:A Field Study of EGS and Other Primary Schools in Madhya Pradesh

This paper presents the results of fieldwork on rural primary schools of two districts of Madhya Pradesh, India, conducted from December 2001 to March 2002. Since the mid-1990’s, the government...

by Francois Leclercq | On 04 Jun 2009

Assessing the Regional and District capacity for Operationalizing Emergency Obstetric Care through First Referral Units in Gujarat

Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC) is crucial for preventing maternal deaths for which the policy has been to establish First Referral Units (FRUs). Twenty seven facilities from 6 districts from each adm...

by Raman Parvathy | On 03 Jun 2009

A Primary Evaluation of Service Delivery under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM): Findings from a Study in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan

This paper seeks to evaluate quantity and quality of service delivery in rural public health facilities under NRHM. On appropriate and feasible measures, the former is assessed on the static and dynam...

by Kaveri Gill | On 02 Jun 2009

Do Social Clauses in Generalized Systems of Preferences Advance the Cause of Women?

While in the era of globalization, millions of women got paid employment in labour-intensive industries in developing countries, they still face precarious working conditions. Women rights violations...

by Franziska Humbert | On 01 Jun 2009

Contribution of the Unorganised sector to GDP Report of the Sub Committee of a NCEUS Task Force

The task of the Sub-committee was to review the existing methodologies for estimating the contribution of unorganised/informal sector to GDP and suggest measures to facilitate direct estimation. The G...

by NCEUS NCEUS | On 28 May 2009

Aids In India

This paper revolves around the Public health related aspects of industrial and intellectual property rights policies in a developing country with respect to Aids in India. It also focusses on its prev...

by Samira Guennif | On 22 May 2009

If Technology is like Word, Institutions are like Grammar: Institutional Context of Technological Innovations and Knowledge Systems at Grassroots

Many developing countries have taken interest in learning from the Honey Bee Network experience for replicating the model. In a UNESCO conference, the author was asked to identify the key steps that...

by Anil K Gupta | On 21 May 2009

Reporting The Olympic Year

This paper discusses if the Olymipic Games presented a change- not change along the lines of South Koreas leap towards democracy after the Seol Olympics, but some small shift- and how the nature of it...

by Jane Macartney | On 05 May 2009

India – 1947-79 Six Parliaments and Democratic Rights

Communal riots have become an annual feature of Indian life, although their number varies from year to year. A situation has come to pacs where maddening communal violence, arbitrary actions of exe...

by People's Union for Democratic Rights PUDR | On 16 Apr 2009

Vote-Buying and Reciprocity

In this paper, how social preferences overcome the commitment problems implicit in vote-buying is examined. Data used for the study is a survey information on vote-buying experienced in a 2006 munici...

by Frederico Finan | On 03 Apr 2009

Beyond Industrialization New Approaches to Development Strategy Based on the Service Sector

This paper argues that it is becoming increasingly difficult for most developing countries to achieve rapid growth through industrialization, and especially through export oriented activities. But th...

by Peter Sheehan | On 03 Feb 2009

Fiscal Federalism, State Lobbying and Discretionary Finance in India

The paper attempts to construct political influence variables and explain discrepancies in fund disbursement through proper econometric specification in the Indian context.

by Rongili Biswas | On 21 Jan 2009

Exploring the Relationship Between Military Spending and Human Rights Performance in South Asia

The relationship between military spending and human rights is one of the most prominent issues in political economy. Yet, the linkage between the two is empirically underdeveloped. Seeking to fulfi...

by Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati | On 08 Jan 2009

Emerging through Technological Capability: An Overview of India’s Technological Trajectory

In this paper an overview of India’s technological trajectory with a view to understanding the nuances of India’s technological capability and the role it has played in the process of India’s econom...

by Amit Shovon Ray | On 26 Dec 2008

The Chinese Export Bundles: Patterns, Puzzles and Possible Explanations

Using product-level data on exports from different cities within China, this paper investigates the contributing factors to the rising export sophistication. [WP no. 226].

by Zhi Wang | On 26 Nov 2008

Values and Meanings of Citizenship

What does citizenship mean to poor and socially excluded people? How do their views help us understand and analyse what 'inclusive' citizenship means?

by Naila Kabeer | On 20 Nov 2008

Gender-based Indicators in Human Development: Correcting for ‘Missing Women’

Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure are two gender-based indicators provided by the United Nations Development Program. Population share of the genders enter the formulation of t...

by Hippu Salk Kristle Nathan | On 18 Nov 2008

Untold Stories: The Human Face of Poverty Dynamics

The policy brief describes the life stories of five people, to show the face of human face of chronic poverty. It also suggests that such life history material can be an important source of data for p...

by Martin Prowse | On 11 Nov 2008

Sustaining Rural Livelihoods in Fragile Environments : Resource Endowments or Policy Interventions? (A Study in the Context of Participatory Watershed Development in AP)

This paper primarily assesses the status of rural livelihoods in fragile environments with diverse resource endowments and policy interventions. Livelihood assessment was carried out using the sustai...

by V Ratna Reddy | On 07 Nov 2008

Affective Cosmopolitanism Ashis Nandy’s Utopia

Ashish Nandy’s utopia is based on a particular view of cosmopolitanism – one that acknowledges and acts upon suffering as a global feature irrespective of geographical and historical location. Nandy’s...

by Pramod K. Nayar | On 16 Oct 2008

Inside Tarini Bhavan: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s Padmarag and the Richness of South Asian Feminism in Furthering Unsectarian Gender-Just Human Development

The first section of this essay considers the personal narratives of suffering and growth of the Tarini Bhavan workers and inmates. The second section analyses the ideological contours of the reform...

by Bagchi B | On 16 Oct 2008

The State of Human Rights in Bangladesh

The system of justice in Bangladesh is derived from the common law system. The judiciary tends to be conservative in its application of international law. While in many cases the judiciary has cited i...

by South Asians for Human Rights SAHR | On 07 Oct 2008

An Ethnographic Study on Women in Prostitution in Bihar

The study tries to focus on the violation of human rights that occur in prostitution. It holds that it is the responsibility of the state to protect these human rights and address the fundamental stru...

by Nina Srivastava | On 30 Sep 2008

On the Economics of Higher Education in India, With Special Reference to Women

The paper investigates the role of economic factors in the enrolment decision at the higher education level in India. The study concludes that the rate of participation of women is in a disadvantage...

by Sugeeta Upadhyay | On 29 Sep 2008

Another Commission is Not Enough:Ram Harri Shrestha and the Corrosive Impact of Impunity on Nepal's Unsteady Peace.

Neplal's maoists initiated the process of crippling the institution of parliamentary dempcracy by giving primacy to military meanse over the political. Mainstream parties, unable to resist petty polit...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 29 Sep 2008

Population Growth Trends, Projections, Challenges and Opportunities

Demographic transition is a global phenomenon; population growth is inevitable in the initial phases of the transition. For India the current phase of the demographic transition is both a challenge an...

by Prema Ramachandran | On 26 Sep 2008

Pluralism, Tenancy and Poverty: Cultivating Open-Mindedness in Poverty Studies

This paper applies theoretical pluralism to studies of poverty. However in order to be more specific it takes as a case study some competing studies of Indian rural tenancy relations. In the paper, sp...

by Wendy Olsen | On 25 Sep 2008

Persistent Inequality: An Explanation Based on Limited Parental Altruism

This paper provides an explanation for the observed persistence in income inequality across households in terms limited parental altruism. It is postulated that the degree of parental altruism is ‘lim...

by Mausumi Das | On 24 Sep 2008

Sri Laka Budget Speech

2008 Budget presented by His Excellency the President Mahinda Rajapaksa

by Ministry of Finance and Planning Sri Lanka | On 18 Sep 2008

Estimating the Value of Educational Capital Formation in India.

Education is an important component of economic activity, although investment in education is only one of the many forms of investment in human capital. The idea behind this is that investment in huma...

by Haripriya Gundimeda | On 17 Sep 2008

Entrepreneurship and Innovation Strategies in ICT SMEs in Enlarged Europe (EU25)

The paper investigates the innovation behavior off entrepreneurs in small and medium sized enterprises in the ICT sector of the European Union. In this study innovative strategies of entrepreneurs are...

by Kaushalesh Lal | On 15 Sep 2008

Human rights in retreat

Is there not a worse situation today than during the Emergency? There was no colonization of the country by the foreign powers, with agriculture, industry, education, defense, health and trade being a...

by P.B. Sawant | On 05 Sep 2008

Critique of the Human Rights Ordinance in Bangladesh 2008: A Human Rights Commission must have effective Powers

It was left to human rights defenders to inform the UN Committees on the situation of human rights by submitting shadow reports, to investigate violations, and to campaign for an end to impunity for l...

by Hameeda Hossain | On 05 Sep 2008

Withdrawal of the Maoists’ unilateral cease-fire:Where does Nepal go?

The government of Nepal took an illegal measure to try the cases under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Ordinance. Under the amendments, all anti-terrorist cases will be heard in-c...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 27 Aug 2008

The Naxals get lethal: Chhattisgarh continues to be the epicenter of the conflict

Chhattisgarh continues to be the epicenter of the Naxalite conflict as a direct consequence of the counter-insurgency Salwa Judum campaign. There have been credible reports of serious human rights vio...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 18 Aug 2008

No Gross National Happiness for Bhutanese Refugees

One sixth of the population of Bhutan is displaced in Nepal and India. The prolonged exile of Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal and India is a major human rights deficit in the South Asian region, a...

by South Asians for Human Rights SAHR | On 12 Aug 2008

Willingness to Pay for Improved Sanitation Services and its Implication on Demand Responsive Approach of BRAC Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programme

This study aimed to provide some insights into sanitation-related strategies taken by the BRAC Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Programme from an economic point of view. The aim of this report i...

by Kazi Faisal Bin Seraj | On 06 Aug 2008

A Human Rights Commission Must Have Effective Powers

Ratification imposes specific obligations on a state to incorporate human rights into national laws, to amend legislation, to promote, protect and fulfill human rights and prevent violations of huma...

by South Asians for Human Rights SAHR | On 31 Jul 2008

Factors Influencing the Performance of Indian and Chinese Software Firms

This paper analyses the determinants of growth and profit behaviour of the Chinese and Indian IT Software firms.

by N.S. Siddharthan | On 30 Jul 2008

The Politics of Responsibility to Protect

This occasional paper addresses three questions revolving around the IMF policy. The questions are: What are the underlying factors shaking the very foundation of one of the pillars of the internatio...

by Marc Saxer | On 29 Jul 2008

Bangladesh and Climate Change: Need for a Comprehensive Adaptive Strategy

The aim of this paper is to examine the effects climate change will have on Bangladesh and also gives some possible solutions for tackling climate change.

by Centre for Trade and Development CENTAD | On 24 Jul 2008

The Chinese Chequer: Split Wide Open in Nepal

Although unilateral ceasefire declared by the Maoists on 3 September 2005 brought down the level of violence, the security forces sought to provoke the Maoists. The security forces and the Maoists hav...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 21 Jul 2008

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan - Annual Report Highlights

For a better part of the year 2007 the state of Pakistan was only half alive. That naturally reduced its capacity, never rated high, to guarantee the people's human rights. Thus, from the point of vi...

by South Asians for Human Rights SAHR | On 18 Jul 2008

Poverty Eradication and Human Rights

This paper examines the proposition that "poverty is a violation of human rights". The author disuses the possibility of this proposition to be implementable in real case senarios and in polcies,

by Arjun Sengupta | On 26 Jun 2008

The UN scam on human trafficking: No protection for the victims

On 8th March, United Nations agencies, governments and non-governmental organisations across the world celebrated “International Women’s Day”. But in the United Nations Human Rights Council there was...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 18 Jun 2008

Viet Nam,Human Rights and Trade

With the liberalization of trade Viet Nam became the 150th member of World Trade Organization in January 2007. The country became an example to the world on how trade can spur the economic and social...

by David Kinley | On 03 Jun 2008

Towards a Less Imperfect State of the World: The Gulf Between North and South

Many developing countries assert a claim to the privilege of managing world order on a shared basis but exhibit a strong reluctance to accept the responsibility flowing from such privilege, for exampl...

by Ramesh Thakur | On 14 May 2008

Reprioritisation of Public Expenditure for Human Development

An important method of managing resources to finance consistent and balanced human development lies in the reprioritisation of current expenditure in accordance with the urgent needs and shortfalls...

by Tapas K. Sen | On 13 May 2008

Report on SAHR Fact Finding Mission to the North and East of Sri Lanka to Assess the State of Displaced Persons

This report on the state of displaced persons in the North and East of Sri Lanka analyses the security condition and concerns of those who live in makeshifts and camps in conflict affected areas. It p...

by South Asians for Human Rights SAHR | On 11 Apr 2008

Divided Destinies, Unequal Lives: Economic, cultural and Social rights and the Indian State

On 10th July, 1979, India - by ratifying the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) - became a State party to this treaty body. Reporting guidelines of the Covenant re...

by Peoples Collective PCESCR | On 10 Apr 2008

His and Her Economics

Economics has always been, and remains, a male-dominated occupation. In Mark Blaug’s mid-1980s surveys of great economists before and after Keynes, only three females – Rosa Luxemburg, Irma Adelman an...

by Brian Snowdon | On 17 Mar 2008

Police Firing on Adivasis in Gujarat: Report of Fact Finding Committee, PUCL Gujarat

Report of the committee of concerned citizens formed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Gujarat to enquire into the facts related to the police firing on the Adivasis demonstration on t...

by Ghanshyam Shah | On 02 Mar 2008

The Evolutionary and Developmental Foundations of Mathematics

Recent behavioral and neuroimaging studies with humans and monkeys provide compelling evidence of shared numerical capacities across species. In this primer, it is explained why our understanding of t...

by Michael J. Beran | On 12 Feb 2008

Gender Planning, Budgeting and Auditing

This manual is intended to help local governments to uphold the human rights of women, by involving them in identifying their needs and with their participation, to find possible solutions and move to...

by Aleyamma Vijayan | On 04 Feb 2008

Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

The work of the IPCC has helped the world to learn more on all aspects of climate change, and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has acknowledged this fact. [Speech delivered in Oslo]

by Pachauri R K | On 04 Feb 2008

Transport: Then, now, and Tomorrow

A historical survey of transport to demonstrate that transport has always been recognised as of paramount importance for the wellbeing of the whole community, that a combination of collective and indi...

by Ralph Harrington | On 01 Feb 2008

From Theory to Practice: Translating Research into Health Outcomes

Commenting on recent research articles which look at the potential health benefits of behaviour change, the PLoS Medicine Editors say that publication of the findings of such research is only one part...

by PLoS Medicine | On 01 Feb 2008

Visible Hand: Public Policy nd Economic Growth in the Nehru Era

This paper investigates the relationship between the policy regime and growth during 1950-64 termed here ‘the Nehru era’. While there exist valuable early appraisals of the period, access to new data...

by Pulapre Balakrishnan | On 28 Jan 2008

Book Review: Symbolic Ordering in Communication Process

Review of The Social and the Symbolic edited by Edited by Bernard Bel, Jan Brouwer, Biswajit Das, Vibodh Parthasarathi, Guy Poitevin; Sage, New Delhi; 2007, pp 481, Rs 895.

by Ratnawali Sinha | On 22 Jan 2008

Transgenics in Indian Agriculture: Experiences so far and implications of KIA proposals on Indian Farmers

KIA proposes to bring a paradigm shift in Indian Agriculture in terms of human resource development, research, technology generation, technology dissemination and commercialization. In the short run,...

by Ramanjaneyulu G V | On 05 Jan 2008

Advice for Ms Gandhi

Congress party has to find out why the aam aadmi has deserted the party? There are some advice to Sonia Gandhi which she will not get from her advisors.

by T.N. Ninan | On 31 Dec 2007

Equitable Society : A New Concern For Social Work

Trained Social Workers must be very well aware of Equitable Society philosophy and implementation programmes. They must find opportunity of working with extremely marginalized people.

by Manish Dwivedi | On 27 Dec 2007

Mangroves - A Natural Defense against Cyclones: An investigation from Orissa, India

Following this disaster in Orissa caused by a super cyclone there was a great deal of controversy over whether the high levels of mangrove forest destruction in the area had increased the impact of th...

by Saudamini Das | On 13 Dec 2007

HDI in Context

The United Nations Development Programme has just put out its latest Human Development Report, containing the human development index (HDI) for 177 countries, with the data being for 2005. India ranks...

by T.N. Ninan | On 03 Dec 2007

National Human Development Report 2001

The process of development, in any society, should ideally be viewed and assessed in terms of what it does for an average individual.For any approach or development framework to be meaningful and effe...

by Planning Commission, India | On 28 Nov 2007

Decentralisation and Issues in Self Governance in Tribal Areas of South Gujarat

To examine the functioning of Gram Sabha and participation of tribal communities therein to asses the status of self governance under the “Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) A...

by Ratnawali Sinha | On 14 Nov 2007

Poverty, Development and Basic Biology

Although PLoS Biology does not often publish articles that grapple with issues like poverty and human development, it was chosen to do so here because it is believed that the collective output of scie...

by Liza Gross | On 12 Nov 2007

Culture and Fertility Transition in India

Examines the evidence for various explantions usually offered for the differences infertility behaviour across regions and over time in India. The data sets used in the study are National Sample Surve...

by Pramila Krishnan | On 24 Oct 2007

Elements of Effective Central Banking: Theory, Practice, and History

The key elements of effective central banking that account for much of the improvement in monetary policy around the world today are outlined and explained. The past quarter of the century has been a...

by Marvin Goodfriend | On 09 Oct 2007

Governance and Health

As we celebrate 60 years of political independence and take pride in our dynamic private sector, our remarkable IT successes and all the other usual dimensions of success, let us remind ourselves that...

by Shankar Acharya | On 08 Oct 2007

Inititaing Public Debate on Reforms in Higher Education

Idea on National Knowledge Commission, what it is and what are they trying to accomplish, ask for the audience support, understanding and also talk about the need for major reforms in University educa...

by Sam Pitroda | On 05 Oct 2007

Peace, Progress and Prosperity in the Northeastern Region: Vision 2020: Volume I

Troubled by history and geo-politics, the Northeast has remained one of the most backward regions of the country.the department of the Northeastern Region entrusted the task of preparing the Vision 2...

by M.Govinda Rao | On 27 Sep 2007

Defining Human Differences in Biomedicine

An extensive literature reflects millennia of concern over what we humans call ourselves and others. All life sciences are now grappling further with how to categorize and study the nearly infinite po...

by Maggie Brown | On 26 Sep 2007

HIV Denial in the Internet Era

23 years after the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), there is still denial that the virus is the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). The Internet has served as...

by Tara C Smith | On 11 Sep 2007

Human Rights Violations Against Sexuality Minorities in India

This report is located in the twin contexts of the global movement for recognition of sexuality minority rights and the increasing assertiveness of sexuality minority voices at the local level. It exa...

by PUCL Karnataka | On 27 Aug 2007

ACHR Weekly Review: Pakistan: The Land of Religious Apartheid and Jackboot Justice

On 14 August 2007, the United Nations Committee on the International Convention Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD Committee) is tentatively scheduled to examine the situation of...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 11 Aug 2007

Democracy, Political Dissent, and Repressive Laws

The recent arrest of Binayak Sen of the PUCL-Chattisgarh has brought to the fore the important question as to what democracy means when it is practised under the ever present shadow of state repressio...

by Hasan Mansur | On 08 Aug 2007

Impact of Special Economic Zones on Employment, Poverty and Human Development

There are three channels through which SEZs address these issues: employment generation, skill formation (human capital development), and technology and knowledge upgradation. It examines how the imp...

by Aradhna Aggarwal | On 02 Aug 2007

Institutional Influences on Human Capital Accumulation: Micro Evidence from Children Vulnerable to Bondage

The paper examines child labour, lower schooling attendance and attainment, and significantly elevated fertility in families vulnerable to debt bondage.

by Eric Edmonds | On 02 Aug 2007

Custodial Death of Rohtas Singh of Haryana: A Fact Finding Report

The report of a two member team of Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) consisting of Advocate Nitesh Kumar Singh and Advocate Rajesh Pandey on the death in custody of Rohtas Singh, owner of a ready-m...

by Asian Centre for Human Rights ACHR | On 13 Jul 2007

Health Domain of the Ultra Poor: An Exploration

Relatively small proportion of literature has focused upon health behaviours and types of health services used by the poor in rural Bangladesh, particularly ultra poor households.This study aimed to e...

by Shahaduz Zaman | On 14 Jun 2007

Child Labor

The essay is to provides a detailed overview of the state of the recent empirical literature on why and how children work as well as the consequences of that work. It provides a descriptive overview o...

by Eric Edmonds | On 01 Jun 2007

Social Capital and Economic Well-being

The proposition that social capital expands household welfare is tested by estimating the effects of social interactions on per capita expenditure among a sample of 810 households in northern Banglade...

by Farhad Ameen | On 30 May 2007

Ethics in Organizations: The Case of Tata Steel

The concern for ethical decision-making among the regulators, social groups and managers has substantially increased since failure of some of the prominent business organizations like Shell and Enron...

by Sunil Kumar Maheshwari | On 30 May 2007

Humanism: The Essence of Civil Liberties

Humanism is defined to mean: any system which puts human interests and the mind of man paramount; non-religious philosophy based on liberal values; tendency to civilise; and compassion. Tarkunde satis...

by J. S. Verma | On 28 May 2007

Determinants of Maternal Health Care Utilisation in India: Evidence from a Recent Household Survey

The reasons for the low levels of utilization of basic health services may be household income, high illiteracy and ignorance, and a host of traditional factors. An attempt is made to discuss the issu...

by Abusaleh Shariff | On 17 Apr 2007

Book Review: Trojan Horses?

Review of Susantha Goonatilake's 'Recolonisation: Foreign Funded NGOs in Sri Lanka' . Takes up case studies of some leading development and human rights NGOs in Sri Lanka, arguing that NGOs are neith...

by Mohan Rao | On 21 Mar 2007

Suicides by Cotton Farmers in Andhra Pradesh

The paper disuses and analyzes the condition of cotton farmers of Andra Pradesh and the reasons for their committing suicides.

by Reji K Joseph | On 05 Mar 2007

Book Review: Economists on the Couch

Review of 'Inside the Economist’s Mind: Conversations with Eminent Economists' Edited by Paul Samuelson and William A. Barnett No review can do adequate justice to the embarrassment of riches in th...

by Anand Chandavarkar | On 05 Mar 2007

Public Expenditure on Education : A Review of Selected Issues and Evidence

The role of education in economic development has been recognised for quite some time in mainstream economic literature. Divergence between the private and social rate of return from education is th...

by Anit Mukherjee | On 02 Mar 2007

Maria’s Dilemma

There was something bothering Maria. When Maria was younger, there was another man. It was all in the past, but she could never get herself to tell anyone. She did not see anything wrong. It was all i...

by Kishor G. Bhat | On 17 Feb 2007

The Performance of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) in India:Has Past Anything to Suggest for Future?

Since their inception, regional rural banks (RRBs) have taken deep roots and have become a sort of inseparable part of the rural credit structure in India. The financial viability of the RRBs has, h...

by Biswa Swarup Misra | On 10 Jan 2007

The International Mobility of Technical Talent: Trends and Development Implications

This paper charts the complex dynamics of the movement of technical talent in the world economy and assesses broadly the impact of such mobility on both sending and receiving countries. Based on sec...

by Anthony P. D'Costa | On 29 Dec 2006

Teacher Truancy in India: The Role of Culture, Norms and Economic Incentives

Social scientists often emphasize how ‘culture’ and ‘social norms’ can be important determinants of economic behavior and development. This raises questions of the relative importance of economic ince...

by Kaushik Basu | On 26 Dec 2006

Aid, Public Spending and Human Welfare: Evidence from Quantile Regressions

The paper addresses the issues of contribution of aids towards human development and the efficiency of such aids in poorer countries, assessing if there is cross-country evidence for an effective huma...

by Karuna Gomanee | On 22 Dec 2006

Rights-based Strategies in the Prevention of Domestic Violence

This study is an attempt to broaden the discussion about the prevention of domestic violence against women, informed by a rights based strategy. The study discusses the critical elements of a human ri...

by Pradeep Kumar Panda | On 19 Dec 2006

Educational Deprivation of Children in Andhra Pradesh: Levels and Trends, Disparities and Associative Factors

In line with the perspectives of human capital, human development and human rights, this paper conceives education to be the basic right of children and re-christens all children who are not in schoo...

by M. Venkatnarayana | On 06 Dec 2006

The Age of Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman`s place in the world of economics is well assured not only because of his concepts and theorems but also due to his demonstration that free market can be an instrument of social justic...

by Deena Khatkhate | On 01 Dec 2006

Gender Disaggregated Analysis of South Gujarat Tribals: Role of Social Capital in Human Development

This paper, based on ‘capabilities’ approach, analyses the ‘development outcomes’ forf ‘tribals’ of rural south Gujarat and examines the relative roles of physical, human and social capital within a...

by Arti Nanavati | On 26 Nov 2006

What Education? Imperative of Change

Once the reach of education remains circumscribed only by its functional role in the formation of human capital, which, by definition, has little significance beyond its instrumentality in production...

by Arup Maharatna | On 20 Nov 2006

Globalization and China's 'Race to the Bottom' in Labour Standards

Globalization, or integration with the world economy via WTO membership, was expected to increase foriegn investment and benefit the labour intensive manufacturing sector in China. Yet, although forei...

by Anita Chan | On 26 Oct 2006

Withering Valli: Alienation, Degradation and Enslavement Of Tribal Women In Attappady

Various policies and programmes implemented avowedly for the benefits of the tribal people have resulted in alienation and degradation of tribesfolk. This detailed study of Kerala's Irular tribal comm...

by Mariamma J. Kalathil | On 20 Oct 2006

Women's Rights and the Crises of International Human Rights Intervention

This paper will map the developments that led to the integration of gender into the international human rights law discourse and examine how the language of ‘violence’ and ‘respectable victimhood’ (...

by Oishik Sarcar | On 29 Aug 2006

Are we there yet? The deferral of justice and the promise of human rights

Utilizing the critical theory of Drucilla Cornell and Costas Douzinas, and looking back to the utopianism of Ernst Bloch, the paperI offers an argument that acknowledges the limits of the law and th...

by Narnia Bohler-Muller | On 28 Jul 2006

From a Rights Perspective

The collection of papers demonstrates that the human right to development in essence brings together several distinct but not mutually inconsistent streams of philosophical, political, economic and so...

by Vijay Kumar Nagaraj | On 15 Jul 2006

Our Future: Sustainable Cities--Turning Ideas into Action

In convening the third session of the World Urban Forum in Vancouver, the United Nations Human Settlements Program has asked us to focus our attention on the Sustainable City and consider critical cha...

by Patricia L. McCarney | On 13 Jul 2006

Ethics in Social Sciences: Theory and Practice: A National Consultation

What are the critical areas in social science research and intervention which might require systematic attention to ethical issues? A national level consultation on ‘ Ethics in Social Science Research...

by Sunita Bandewar | On 09 May 2006

De-colonising the Aesthetic Sense:The story of craft revival in Aruvacode potters’ village

Experiential knowledge is what indigenous knowledge is all about. Unfortunately again the Western intellectuals are reframing indigenous knowledge to suit their purposes. In the course of living with...

by Jinan K.B. | On 21 Apr 2006

Verdict 2004: From Identities to Issues and Interests?

This paper is a humble attempt to take an intellectual and political position while analyzing the 2004 election results in the context of neo-liberal regime in India and also tries to portray whether...

by Maidul Islam | On 31 Mar 2006

Health Inequalities, Social Cohesion and Social Capital: An Exploration

This paper claims that the roots and remedies of health inequalities reflected in the major academic debates that culminated with full force towards the turn of the last century, have done little to u...

by Vijay Kumar Yadavendu | On 30 Mar 2006

Communication for Development: Need for Collective Vision

Review of: Communication Technology and Human Development: Recent Experiences in the Indian Social Sector by Avik Ghosh; Sage Publications, New Delhi; 2006; Rs. 340.

by Devan Chandrasekher | On 23 Mar 2006

Was India’s Tribal Demographic Behaviour Superior In The Past?

Amidst massive ethnographical and anthropological literature on India’s tribes, patterns of their demographic behaviour (e.g. fertility and mortality) have received relatively little attention. Howeve...

by Arup Maharatna | On 14 Mar 2006

Economic Survey 2005-06, Chapter 10

Social Sectors

by Ministry of Finance | On 27 Feb 2006

Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research on Human Subjects

Central Ethics Committee on Human Research (CECHR) was constituted under the chairmanship of Honourable Justice Shri M.N. Venkatachaliah by the then Director General, Dr. G.V. Satyavati to consider ...

by Indian Council of Medical Research | On 08 Feb 2006

Gender, Work and Organizational Culture: A Southeast Asian Experience

Organizations operate in the social milieu and therefore the socio-cultural factors greatly influence the organizational culture. The Asian societies are patriarchal in nature that gives superior posi...

by Sunita Singh-Sengupta | On 13 Jan 2006

The Dance of Ideas: Dialectical Relationship between Feminism and Philosophy

This paper attempts to delineate the dialectical relationship between feminism and philosophy, and begins by tracing the rise of feminist consciousness. This is because ideas do not exist in abstract...

by Veena Poonacha | On 04 Jan 2006

Approaching Human Phenomena: A Methodological Note

The note is an attempt to make a methodological argument to the students about how to approach the study of human phenomena. Based on the experience of teaching about work, workers and organisations t...

by Rahul Varman | On 20 Dec 2005

Gandhi’s Economic Thought and Modern Economic Development: Some Reflections

A fresh wave of globalisation since the early 1990s has created both hope and despair. Failure of state has reaffirmed faith in market based institutions. Expansion in trade across national borders an...

by Sudarshan Iyengar | On 07 Dec 2005

B.S.Minhas: 'Prescribing Rationality'

In his early years, B S Minhas, who passed away recently, enriched economics with his valued theoretical contributions that are today an integral part of economic literature. These were both acknowled...

by Deena Khatkhate | On 21 Nov 2005

Gender and Malaria Among Rural Poor In Jharkhand

This is a qualitative study conducted by Sama in collaboration with Mahila Jagriti Sanstha,a community-based organisation in Gomia, Jharkhand to understand the interrelationship between gender and mal...

by SAMA .. | On 17 Sep 2005

New Institutionalism And Legislative Governance In Indian States: A Comaparitive Study Of West Bengal And Uttar Pradesh

In contrast to behaviouralism, which held that institutions reflect the society in which they are embedded, New Institutionalists argue that institutions have an inner logic of action, enjoy autonomy...

by Sudha Pai | On 01 Sep 2005

American Anthropological Association

Anthropologists work in many parts of the world in close personal association with the peoples and situations they study. In a field of such complex involvements, misunderstandings, conflicts, and th...

by Anonymous | On 12 Aug 2005

Beyond The Human Development Index

The paper is a preliminary attempt to examine the human development scenario in Maharashtra. Its starting point is the Human Development Index, which indicates average levels of attainment in three di...

by Sangita Kamdar | On 05 Aug 2005