India, like other Asian countries, has focused its climate change adaptation strategies on rural and urban areas while neglecting the urban fringes, say experts. Peri-urban areas are characterised by haphazard, accelerated expansion and are farthest from basic urban services and infrastructure, according to United Nations-Habitat’s ‘The State of Asian Cities 2010-11’. By 2020, of the projected 4.2 billion urban population of the world, 2.2 billion will be living in Asia, many...

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has criticised UN agencies like the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) for not doing enough to fight hunger and poverty. “Countries, food agencies and donors aren’t working together in a focused and co-ordinated way to provide the help small farmers need, when they need it,” Gates told the governing council of the IFAD in...

If India is an aspiring society, education is perhaps the quickest vehicle of social mobility. Right to Education (RTE) is a supplyside intervention by the government that will make education cheaper and, in the process, every child will get a chance to be educated. But an approach that focuses on availability of schools, getting children to the classroom and getting them taught by reasonably well-trained teachers is not enough. Retention...

India's economic growth has added over seven million new jobs every year for almost a quarter of a century. Workers have seen their wages - adjusted for prices - rise by nearly 3% a year. Poverty rates among wage workers and the self-employed have fallen. Going forward, with swelling numbers of new entrants - and more women entering the job market , as was the case during east Asia's rapid...

The approach paper for the 12th Five-Year Plan with focus on faster, sustained and inclusive growth is candid and forward-looking. On poverty reduction, the document notes, without comment, the annual trend decline of 0.8% accelerating to 1% during 2004-05 to 2009-10, against a promised target of 2% in the 11th Plan. It emphasises that India will easily meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving poverty by 2015, over 25...