The Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society, JeeVika, a state-led women’s self-help group, is active since 2007. Based on primary research, this article highlights the potential role of the individual rural woman – the didi – in driving the social and economic shifts necessary for sustainable poverty reduction in rural Bihar. The term didi is used to address an elder sister. It embodies the notion of respect. Traditionally, the term has remained...
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UN and Oxford University unveil new index to measure poverty
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Oxford University today launched a new index to measure poverty levels which they said give a “multidimensional” picture of people living in hardship, and could help target development resources more effectively. The new measure, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, was developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with UNDP support, the two institutions said in a joint...
More »The social question, who cares? by Jan Breman
Built into the economic dogma of growth first is the ingrained notion held by large segments of the nation's elite that the fabric of inequality is meant to remain unimpaired. “The Challenge of Employment in India; An Informal Economy Perspective” sums up the findings of a National Commission set up in September 2004 to review the status of the unorganised/ínformal sector in India (Volume I Main Report and volume II...
More »Why half the sky is not enough by Suhasini Haidar
The lesson from the rest of the world is that seat reservation for women to merely increase their representation in the legislature will not do; they need to be empowered in the real sense. During the debate in Parliament and outside over the Women's Reservation Bill, many people have referred to quota “success stories” worldwide — proposing that India could gain from the experience of about 40 other countries that...
More »Water and sustainable agriculture by S Janakarajan
The key message of the book is that agriculture in South Asia is quite heavily stressed due to A complex set of socio-economic, agro-climatic, and hydrological factors WATER, AGRICULTURE AND SUSTAINABLE WELL-BEING: Edited by Unai Pascual, Amita Shah, Jayanta Bandyopadhyay; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001. Rs. 750. “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less...
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