Development models that focus attention on the poor while expanding job opportunities, increased government spending on social services and Aid flows from affluent nations are all successful strategies for alleviating global poverty, the United Nations says. Access to low carbon energy and mobilizing domestic capital by, for example, improving tax collection, are the other factors the UN Development Programme (UNDP) identifies in a new report as crucial factors for the...

The latest report on the progress of millennium development goals (MDG) by the United Nations has sAid that robust social protection and employment schemes such as India's Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) reduce poverty and reverse inequality. In its report, ‘What Will it Take to Achieve Millennium Development Goals,' the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has sAid the MNREGS is known for improving livelihoods through legal guarantee of...

The revolution of the 1960s saved decades worth of greenhouse gas emissions. The Green Revolution of the 1960s raised crop yields and cut hunger — and also saved decades worth of greenhouse gas emissions, a study concludes. U.S. researchers found cumulative global emissions since 1850 would have been one third as much again without the Green Revolution's higher yields. Although modern farming uses more energy and chemicals, much less land needs...

C.K.Ramachandran Consultant - governance, institutional reform and rural livelihoods   N.Narayanasamy SAGE New Delhi, India 2009 Pages - 363 Price Rs. 550   This is an exhaustive treatise on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) which evolved during the 80s and 90s as a reaction to the top-down approach to development. The book traces the evolution of PRA in considerable detail and attempts to distinguish it from several other related streams of participatory approaches some of which have vanished without...

The ministries of environment and science seem to have resolved their differences over who will govern the entry of genetically modified (GM) crops in India. The controversial genetic engineering approval committee, or GEAC, which currently gives the nod for the commercial release of GM crops, is likely to be integrated with a biotechnology regulator proposed by the science ministry, two ministry officials sAid on condition of anonymity. This will relegate GEAC, which...