That the economies of Asia, in particular China, India and Australia, are responsible for whatever growth is currently taking place on the planet is now acknowledged and underlined by the West as well as by multilateral financial agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. The 3.5 per cent growth in the American economy in the July-September quarter has enthused many into believing that the worst of...

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...

Global population is going to cross the 7 billion mark by the year 2011. World population growth is almost entirely concentrated in the world's poorest countries. In a report prepared by the World Population Reference Bureau (www.prb.org), it has been found that within a span of 12 years, population of the world increased by 1 billion, which can be termed as a historic event. The report says that in the...

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...

For some time now, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been the organising framework for the activities of international organisations and donor agencies. It is probably not very useful any more to quarrel about their relative lack of ambition, their limited aims and absence of recognition of the structural causes of poverty and inequality. All that is well known; even so, simply because of their wide acceptance, the MDGs have...