Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a India-Wide Randomized Policy Experiment

This paper uses political reservations for women in India to study the impact of women's leadership on policy decisions. In 1998, one third of all leadership positions of Village Councils in West Bengal were randomly selected to be reserved for a woman: in these councils only women could be elected to the position of head. Village Councils are responsible for the provision on many local public good in rural areas. Using a data set we collected on 165 Village Councils, we compare the type of public goods provided in reserved and unreserved Villages Councils. We show that women invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of rural women (water, fuel, and roads), while men invest more in education. Women are more likely to participate in the policy-making process if the leader of their village council is a woman.

Human computer interaction for international development: past present and future

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in research into the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of developing regions, particularly into how such ICTs might be appropriately designed to meet the unique user and infrastructural requirements that we encounter in these cross-cultural environments. This emerging field, known to some as HCI4D, is the product of a diverse set of origins. As such, it can often be difficult to navigate prior work, and/or to piece together a broad picture of what the field looks like as a whole. In this paper, we aim to contextualize HCI4D—to give it some historical background, to review its existing literature spanning a number of research traditions, to discuss some of its key issues arising from the work done so far, and to suggest some major research objectives for the future

Service-Learning Times : semester 2 & summer term, 2017/18

Service-Learning (S-L) is an experiential learning approach that empowers students to apply academic knowledge in meaningful community service with reflection. In particular, the Service-Learning and Research Scheme (SLRS) seeks to build research elements into the S-L opportunities, which provide students with diverse and insightful service experiences to enhance their personal growth, intellectual advancement and career readiness while bringing substantial benefits to the collaborating partners. This booklet highlights popular S-L courses. Students wishing to experience the best of S-L should plan ahead and act quickly while places are available.https://commons.ln.edu.hk/sl_times/1001/thumbnail.jp

Dual Role of ICT Interventions for Semi-Literate Rural Communities: A Social Capital Perspective

Prior research has proposed ICT as an intervention for behavior change but it has primarily focused on literate communities. These techniques, however effective fail to prove their metal when it comes to semi-literate rural communities. Because ICT has played an important role in enabling positive change in developing regions we believe they can be contextualized for semi-literate communities as well. In this paper, we use a social capital perspective to focus on India’s farming communities that have comfortable access to mobile ICTs but have not been fully served. We explore some of the inherent challenges in adopting ICTs in a particular belt of villages in Maharashtra (India). Although our results are preliminary they highlight the importance of contextualizing ICTs specifically for semi-literate communities so that they can be better adopted

The PANChSHEEEL Formative report: An integrated health, education, engineering and environmental (HEEE) intervention to optimise infant feeding practices through schools and Anganwadi networks in India

The Participatory Approach for Nutrition in Children: Strengthening Health Education Engineering and Environment Linkages (PANChSHEEEL) project was an interdisciplinary study, designed to explore HEEE (Health, Education, Engineering and Environment) factors that influence Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices and nutrition in India. The study aimed to develop a socio-culturally appropriate, tailored, innovative and integrated cross-sector HEEE intervention package to address malnutrition by supporting optimal Infant and Young Child feeding (IYCF) practices for children in rural India focussing primarily on the period of 6-24 months. The project established an international collaboration between University College London (UCL), Save the Children, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Delhi and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi in order to develop an effective intervention at a key stage of an infant’s cognitive and physical development. A multi-stakeholder panel was developed, with members of the local village community, health workers, school teachers, Angadwadi workers (midwives), community researchers and local community champions becoming key actors for bringing about meaningful change. This holistic, multi-sector and bottom-up approach facilitated a more organic intervention to address “what” and “how” infants were being fed. This report focuses on the methodology and findings of the project

Animal Health Policy and Practice: Scaling-up Community-based Animal Health Systems, Lessons from Human Health

In an extensive literature review, the author develops policy recommendations to facilitate scaling up community-based animal health systems to the national level. Noting that human and animal health services in rural areas have much in common, and that an extensive literature studies policy regarding primary healthcare for humans exists, she surveys that literature for observations and conclusions applicable to policy analysis of primary animal healthcare. She notes differences in the history and development of the two delivery systems. The push for human health services came with a worldwide initiative agreed at a high level in 1978. Health for All was set out as a moral imperative, and programmes have been strongly top-down. Delivery of animal health services, by contrast, has been viewed mainly in terms of economic development, and community-based systems have been cobbled together bottom-up, with NGOs taking the lead. As a result, community animal health workers are not integrated into national systems, and how they are trained and monitored varies even within districts. More broadly, the author details regional differences in community-based animal healthcare initiatives. Whereas in Asia there is considerable government involvement, private practitioners hold much more sway in East Africa. Although the literature is sparse on West Africa and Latin America, professional acceptance of community health workers appears to be high in both regions. The core of the paper is devoted to elaborating six criteria for assessing community-based animal health systems, which the author adapts from studies on primary healthcare systems for humans. She argues that the criteria equity, efficiency, accessibility of services, quality of services, human resources and financial resources must be addressed when scaling-up community-based programmes. The author recommends that policymakers clearly state their national animal health objectives and encourage dialogue between NGOs and existing national structures to allow better coordination of efforts and more equitable and consistent delivery of animal health services in rural areas. She adds that bringing community animal health workers into institutional frameworks and agreeing a standard training curriculum would improve equity in the distribution of benefits.Livestock Production/Industries,

Mobile Devices for Early Literacy Intervention and Research with Global Reach

Extensive work focuses on the uses of technology at scale for post-literate populations (e.g., MOOC, Learning Games, LMS’s). Little attention is afforded to non-literate populations, particularly in the developing world. This paper presents an approach using mobile devices with the ultimate goal to reach 770 million people. We developed a novel platform with a cloud backend to deliver educational content to over a thousand marginalized children in different countries:specifically, in remote villages without schools, urban slums with overcrowded schools, and at-risk, rural schools. Here we describe the theoretical basis of our system and results from case studies in three educational contexts. This model will help researchers and designers understand how mobile devices can help children acquire basic skills and aid each other’s learning when the benefit of teachers is limited or non-existent.Italian Development CouncilMRP FoundationRoanoke County School

Role of Cell Phone in Creating Coveted Mobility in JOB Viewing the Current Employment Challenges in Service Economy

The paper investigates the obstacles to youth employment in India. It draws insights from various case studies across the world and has put a reflection of the experience of Bolivia in Latin America and the services that are offered by the companies such as Assured Labor, Babajob, LabourNet and Souktel. There are several existed innovative model  induced by globalization and technological advancement which can be emulated to create job for poor and marginalized groups of women and youth in developing countries. The paper also discussed employment prospects and employment protection in different social security schemes and active labor protection measures that brought in by the Government of India. Keywords: Youth Employment, Employment Challenges, Active Labour Market Policies, Indian Labour force, Local Economy, Information Services, Mobile Phone For Job Creation, Mobile Phone Technology, Cell Phone And Mobilit

Mobile Banking Adoption Among Rural Consumers: Evidence from India

Recently, Financial Inclusion has received greater attention, as it is a key to economic growth and equality, growth of the business, and stability of financial and banking systems. In the process of understanding how technology is useful for financial inclusion, the study tries to understand the elements that prompt the perceived acceptability of mobile banking among the low income and low literate stratum. To explore these elements, the current piece of work utilized the Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and with the addition of component of perceived risk. The research utilized convenience sampling to collect data from the respondents having Jan Dhan account. The results show that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and perceived risk have a significant influence on intention to use mobile banking among financial inclusion stratum. Surprisingly, the facilitating conditions were found insignificant. The outcomes of the research can guide banks and technology houses to develop a more user-acceptable mobile banking system. Also, the outcome will help policymakers to enhance mobile banking system adoption for financial inclusion by considering influencing elements