AS YOU drive west from Baroda — Gujarat’s cultural capital — towards the coast, it is hard not to marvel at the smooth, fourlane Vadodara-Bharuch National Highway Number 8, which gets you there. The only signs that suggest one is not on cruise control in an SUV somewhere on an expressway in America are occasional roadside dhabas with Indian names and poor passers-by, clad in saris or dhotis. Dwarfed by...

A UN Habitat publication warns that inequalities and worsening informal settlements (read slums) could lead to widespread violence and chaos in the cities and towns of the world. The newly-released report titled “Planning Sustainable Cities: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009” says that with almost 200,000 new dwellers flooding into the world cities and towns each day, there is an urgent need to check the mushrooming of such settlements. The...

The United Nations Development Programme-sponsored 2009 Human Development Report on MIgration, “Overcoming Barriers: Human mobility and Development” has been widely acknowledged as a path-breaking study on human movement. Shattering the many myths around MIgration, the report concludes that most MIgration is in fact beneficial, and calls for supporting policies to ease barriers to free movement. Senior Assistant Country Director, UNDP, K. Seeta Prabhu. discusses the report with The Hindu For...

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (2005) differs from the other poverty alleviation measures in two significant respects. Where most welfare programmes cast the state in the role of benefactor offering handouts to the poor, the NREGS is built around notions of citizenship and entitlement. Secondly, the NREGS also facilitates disclosure by means of regular social audits. These audits, mandated to be done by the Gram Sabhas, are intended to...

The United Nations’ Human Development Report of 2009 paints an idyllic picture of MIgrations. THE recently released United Nations Development Report-2009, titled “Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development”, presents a strong case for governments all over the world to encourage human mobility. MIgrations, including those of low-skilled workforce, pay dividends all round, the report says. However, it does not quite attempt to seriously understand why people migrate, sometimes subjecting themselves...