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42. Resource-Poor Farmers in South India: On the Margins or Frontiers of Globalization?
- Author:
- Rimjhim M. Aggarwal
- Publication Date:
- 09-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- It is often argued that an important reason why globalization may lead to GDP growth but fail to reduce poverty is because the poor are unable to participate in the new market opportunities and are marginalized. In this paper we examine the experience of resource-poor farmers in south India, who participated aggressively in the new market opportunities that opened up with trade reforms. However, these expanded market opportunities failed to improve their welfare. The paper examines why and how this happened.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Globalization, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
43. Primary Education in India: Prospects of Meeting the MDG Target
- Author:
- Bernarda Zamora and Sonia Bhalotra
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper uses two large repeated cross-sections, one for the early 1990s, and one for the late 1990s, to describe growth in school enrolment and completion rates for boys and girls in India, and to explore the extent to which enrolment and completion rates have grown over time. It decomposes this growth into a component due to changes in the characteristics that determine schooling, and another associated with changes in the responsiveness of schooling to given characteristics. Our results caution against the common practice of using current data to make future projections on the assumption that the model parameters are stable. The analysis nevertheless performs illustrative simulations relevant to the question of whether India will be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of realising universal primary education by the year 2015. The simulations suggest that India will achieve universal attendance, but that primary school completion rates will not exhibit much progress.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, and Education
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
44. Childhood Mortality and Economic Growth
- Author:
- Sonia Bhalotra
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper investigates the extent to which the decline in child mortality over the last three decades can be attributed to economic growth. In doing this, it exploits the considerable variation in growth over this period, across states and over time. The analysis is able to condition upon a number of economic and demographic variables. The estimates are used to produce a crude estimate of the rate of economic growth that would be necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of reducing the under-5 mortality by two-thirds, from its level in 1990, by the year 2015. The main conclusion is that, while growth does have a significant impact on mortality risk, growth alone cannot be relied upon to achieve the goal.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Economics, and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- India
45. Reconstruction from Breakdown in Northeastern India: Building State Capability
- Author:
- M. Sajjad Hassan
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- The northeast region of India remains fraught with severe violence, poor growth and acute frustration among its youth. Success of policies to resolve the region's crisis has proved less than encouraging. What could be the way out of the violence–poor growth trap? This paper argues that a key determinant of the instability in the region is the absence of the effective role of the state: to provide security and opportunities for social and economic wellbeing equitably to all sections of society; and to uphold the rule of law. For reconstruction to work the state must act to provide key political goods to all its citizens, and restore its legitimate authority by implementing policies and enforcing laws cleanly and transparently. Political leaders can contribute to this endeavour by organizing politics inclusively.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Development, and Government
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
46. National Food Policies Impacting on Food Security: The Experience of India, a Large Populated Country
- Author:
- S.S. Acharya
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- India accounts for 16.7 per cent of the world's food consumers. With the exception of China, India's size in terms of food consumers is many times larger than the average size of the rest of the countries. At the time of independence in 1947, India was in the grip of a serious food crisis, which was accentuated by the partition of the country. The demand for food far exceeded supply, food prices were high and more than half of the population living below the poverty line with inadequate purchasing power. With high rates of population growth, the dependence on imported food increased further. However, the situation improved considerably after the mid-1960s, when new agricultural development strategy and food policies were adopted. The production of staple cereals increased substantially, mainly contributed by productivity improvements. The dependence on food imports decreased and the country became a marginal net exporter of cereals. There was also an improvement in physical and economic access of households to cereals and other nutritive food products. The proportion of households reporting hunger went down and the incidence of economic poverty reduced. This paper reviews the Indian approach to tackling the severe problem of food insecurity, which India faced immediately after independence. It reviews the evolution of food policy, the major policy instruments deployed, intervention in food marketing system, and the current status of food security/insecurity. The paper also identifies the lessons emerging from the experience of India. In developing countries characterized by large segments of the rural population dependent on food production for livelihood and by the high incidence of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition, the strategy to improve food security must encompass programmes to increase food production that combine improved technology transfer, price support to food producers and supply of inputs at reasonable prices to farmers, improvements in food marketing system, employment generation, direct food assistance programmes, and improvement in the access to education and primary health care.
- Topic:
- Health and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- China, India, and Asia
47. State Recognition of the Right to Food at the National Level
- Author:
- Margaret Vidar
- Publication Date:
- 06-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper considers to what extent the human right to food has been recognized by countries in the world, by analysing international obligations and constitutional provisions, bearing in mind that the right to food may be either explicitly or implicitly protected at the constitutional level. It considers constitutional examples from Switzerland, South Africa and India.
- Topic:
- Human Rights
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, India, Asia, South Africa, and Switzerland
48. The Corporate Debt Market: A Firm-Level Panel Study for India
- Author:
- Basudeb Guha-Khasnobis and Saibal Kar
- Publication Date:
- 05-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Traditionally, firms in India have shown a low preference towards debt financing, despite its advantages. Using panel data from 450 firms during 1992-93 and 2003-04, we attempt to identify factors which could explain the pattern of financing of manufacturing firms in India and the key determinants of their debt structure. We examine the roles of age of the firm, long term borrowing and net sales in affecting its debt structure.
- Topic:
- Economics and Markets
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia
49. Manufacturing, Services and Premature Deindustrialization in Developing Countries: A Kaldorian Analysis
- Author:
- Ajit Singh and Sukti Dasgupta
- Publication Date:
- 05-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- This paper uses a Kaldorian framework to examine the evidence of deindustrialization in developing countries at low levels of income, the jobless growth in these economies and the fast expansion of the informal sector. The questions are specifically examined for the Indian economy, using state level data but the analysis has a wider application for economic policy in developing countries.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Industrial Policy, and Third World
- Political Geography:
- India
50. Globalization, Growth and Poverty in India
- Author:
- Arup Mirtra and N.R. Bhanumurthy
- Publication Date:
- 04-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- In this paper an attempt is made to assess the impact of economic reforms on the incidence of poverty by decomposing the change in poverty ratio between two time points into growth/mean effect, inequality effect and the population shift effect. Based on the National Sample Survey data an analysis has been carried out for two time periods: (i) 1983 to 1993-94 and (ii) 1993-94 to 1999-2000, broadly representing the pre-reform and reform-period respectively, for the rural and urban areas of the fifteen major states, and also for the all-India level. The growth/mean effect, which determines the extent of fall (rise) in poverty incidence due to rise (fall) in mean per capita consumption expenditure, dominates in both the periods over the inequality effect, that estimates the rise (fall) in poverty due to rise (fall) in inequality. It also dominates over the population shift effect, which assesses the net impact on all-areas combined poverty, of a decline (rise) in rural (urban) poverty caused possibly by rural-urban migration. The growth effect, which is beneficial for poverty reduction, seems to have gone up in the reform period. The adverse inequality effect also fell in magnitude in the second period compared to the first. States with a greater beneficial growth effect in the second period relative to the first, also show a fall in the magnitude of an adverse population shift effect in the urban areas, i.e., a relatively less rise in the incidence of urban poverty caused by rural-urban migration.
- Topic:
- Development, Globalization, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- India and Asia