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on Central and Western Asia |
| By: | Santosh Mehrotra (Regional Centre for Asia, UNDP, Bangkok) |
| Keywords: | Poverty, India, South Asia, Employment, Employment guarantee scheme |
| Date: | 2005–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipc:opager:0016&r=cwa |
| By: | Balatchandirane, G. |
| Abstract: | One of the facilitating factors that enabled the rise of IT industry in India is the evolution of IT clusters. A study of these clusters can provide interesting insights. The rise of the Banglaore IT cluster was due, among other things, to some of the policies the Indian government took three decades or earlier. It would be difficult to talk of “benign neglect†of the government towards this sector. Different factors worked in the case of Hyderabad. A comparison between the IT clusters in India has much to tell the new emerging IT clusters in India as well as those outside of it. |
| Keywords: | India, Information technology, Industrial estates, Clusters, Government policy |
| JEL: | L86 O53 |
| Date: | 2007–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper85&r=cwa |
| By: | Balatchandirane, G. |
| Abstract: | There has been a large spurt in the offshore outsourcing of Information Technology (IT) recently. India has been a major recipient of such work. There have been loud protests against the “loss†of jobs in the US as work was shifted to India. The large inflow of IT related work has also had major impact on the Indian economy. There are implications on the foreign policy level as well. While the economic implications are well known, we try to see a little of the foreign policy implications in this paper. |
| Keywords: | India, Information technology, Software, Offshoring, Foreign policy |
| JEL: | L86 O53 |
| Date: | 2007–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jet:dpaper:dpaper86&r=cwa |
| By: | Venu Menon, Sudha |
| Abstract: | In social development and health sector, India’s performance is still lagging behind many Sub-Saharan African countries. There are also disparities between the urban and rural sectors and between privileged upper class and the socially disadvantaged groups. Widespread illiteracy, avoidable morbidity, premature mortality and deep-seated inequality of opportunity are still prevailing in India. India’s achievements in dealing with life expectancy, elementary education, nutritional well being, protection from illness, social security and consumption levels has been substantially and systematically out passed by many other developing countries. Compared to other countries, social sector expenditure is negligible in India, especially when compared it with UNDP recommended ratio. In the case of Indian state we can see that accelerated growth rate does not to have led to a corresponding change in living condition of rural poor. Here lies the importance of participatory mode of approach. The provision of social security cannot rely exclusively either on market forces or on the state initiative. There is an urgent need for participation in the distribution of social security measure. The move towards participatory growth calls for an integrated view of the process of economic expansion. The UN has defined community participation as ‘the creation of opportunity to enable all members of a community and the larger society to actively contribute to and influence the development process to share equitable the fruits of development’. This participatory mode of development views village community as the site for intervention. In this process it has to mediate through agencies working at that level. This is most commonly done through NGOs. In this broader context of Indian state’s commitment to liberalization, present paper attempts to study the participatory intervention of NGO in community health. For a detailed study, success story of AWARE - NGO working among the marginalized people in rural Andhra Pradesh is selected. The paper does not project NGO as viable alternative to fill the space vacated by state. But it only tries to establish that the objective of “Health for All” can be achieved only through community participation. The present paper is divided into 4 parts. The first part briefly outlines health sector performance and trends during the post reform era and its outcomes. The second part analyses the status of health sector in Andhra Pradesh, major indicators and initiatives. The third part in detail discusses the sustainable strategy of AWARE and its impact on health sector in rural Andhra. The final part contains major findings and concluding remarks. |
| Keywords: | India; Community health; participatory development; Andhra Pradesh. |
| JEL: | I18 |
| Date: | 2007–02–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1938&r=cwa |
| By: | Alejandro Grinspun (International Poverty Centre) |
| Keywords: | Social protection, Poverty, Bolivia, Mexico, India, South Africa |
| Date: | 2005–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipc:opager:0017&r=cwa |
| By: | Barry Bosworth; Susan M. Collins; Arvind Virmani |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically examines India's economic growth experience during 1960-2004, focusing on the post 1973 acceleration. Careful attention is paid to data quality. The analysis focuses on two unusual dimensions of India's experience -- the concentration of growth in services production, and the modest levels of human and physical capital accumulation. A growth accounting analysis disaggregates by major sector, and highlights implications for aggregate productivity growth of the reallocation of resources out of agriculture to more productive activities in industry and services. But concerns are raised that growth in services may be overstated. India will need to broaden its current expansion to provide manufactured goods for the world market and jobs for its large pool of low-skilled workers. Increased public saving, as well as a rise in foreign saving -- particularly FDI -- could augment the rising household saving and support the increased investment necessary to sustain rapid growth. |
| JEL: | F43 O4 |
| Date: | 2007–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12901&r=cwa |
| By: | Rao, Madhava P |
| Abstract: | Social Security is becoming a distinct part of social policy of India and the time has come to give a serious thought to ever increasing Social Security needs of the population. There are diversified views on extension of Social Security coverage. Some say it should be limited to only working population and to their families and while others say that the entire population should be covered under Social Security programmes. Social Security schemes further have been branched out as protective Social Security Schemes which address the contingent poverty or employment related poverty, and the promotional Social Security schemes which address immediate economic need of population or subsistence poverty and majority of them are social assistance schemes. Nevertheless, the available contingency related old age income and survivor benefit schemes for the organized working class have been under great criticism on their administration, coverage gap, benefit delivery and inefficient fund management. In the recent times the affordability and sustainability of publicly managed old age income security provisioning has bee under scrutiny. Add to this the current ‘development approach’ of liberalization, globalization and privatization (LPG) has added a large number of people to the informal sector from the formal sector and the formal sector where social security programs have been in operational, started shrinking. Ironically, the one and only organization in India, the Employees Provident Funds Organisation, under the administrative control of the Ministry of Labour, Government of India, administering ‘Old age income, disability and survivor benefit programs, has been under grate criticism in terms of its efficiency, reach and addressing increasing social security needs. |
| Keywords: | Social Securty; social policy; unorganised sector; provident funds; pension; capabilites |
| JEL: | J39 |
| Date: | 2005–12–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1919&r=cwa |
| By: | Firat, Demir |
| Abstract: | Using micro level panel data, we analyze the impacts of uncertainty and risk on real investment performance in three emerging markets, Argentina, Mexico and Turkey. We offer a simple model to explain the disappointingly low fixed investment rates in developing countries during the 1990s. We suggest that under increasing risk and uncertainty combined with capital market imperfections, and rising rates of return in the financial markets over and above those in the real sectors, industrial firms face a portfolio allocation problem in their investment decisions between fixed and financial investments. Our empirical findings support this financialization hypothesis highlighting the conditions and bottlenecks, which become instrumental in directing real sector savings to liquid shortterm investments instead of long-term fixed capital formation and result in a deindustrialization run. |
| Keywords: | Private Investment; Macroeconomic Uncertainty; Financialization; Deindustrialization |
| JEL: | O16 E22 C33 |
| Date: | 2007–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1942&r=cwa |
| By: | Demir, Firat |
| Abstract: | The paper analyzes the relationship between financial liberalization and socio-political risk by identifying the inter-dependent nature of socio-political and economic fault lines in three developing countries. Unlike the previous research, the current article suggests that domestic socio-political factors cannot be isolated from the fluctuations taking place in the economic arena. In particular, we examine the effects of short-term capital inflows on the recipient countries by exploring the dynamic relationship between the volatility of such flows and socio-political instability. Accordingly, we endogenize the volatility of short term capital inflows with political risk variables where increasing volatility by disrupting market activities and private investment increases socio-political risk, which further feeds into the volatility of such flows. In the empirical analysis using both the Granger causality tests and a simultaneous-equation approach we uncover a contemporaneous relationship between the volatility of short-term capital inflows and socio-political instability. The results also challenge the previous research regarding their use of political variables as purely exogenous from economic variables. Likewise, the legitimacy of the arguments explaining investor cautiousness vis-à-vis political developments in the developing countries with purely domestic factors also becomes questionable. |
| Keywords: | Capital Account Liberalization; Volatility of Short Term Capital Flows; Socio-Political Instability; Macroeconomic Uncertainty |
| JEL: | O57 F32 C32 O11 |
| Date: | 2006–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1943&r=cwa |
| By: | Demir, Firat |
| Abstract: | In this paper, by using bi-annual micro-level panel data for Argentina, Mexico and Turkey, we analyse the impacts of volatility of short-term capital inflows on real investment behaviour under financial liberalization. The empirical results suggest that increasing volatility of capital inflows has a significantly negative effect on new investment spending of private real sector firms. The most worrisome conclusion of the paper is that even if developing countries avoid public sector imbalances or external debt mismanagements they are still exposed to significant instabilities through changes in the investor moods aggravated by self-fulfilling prophecies or through changes in the international financial markets. |
| Keywords: | Capital Flow Volatility; Macroeconomic Uncertainty; Private Investment; Financial Liberalization |
| JEL: | O57 O16 F32 F43 C33 |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1944&r=cwa |