Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database Version 5.0

The Social Assistance in Developing Countries Database is a user-friendly tool that provides summary information on social assistance interventions in developing countries. It provides a summary of the evidence available on the effectiveness of social assistance interventions in developing countries. It focuses on programmes seeking to combine the reduction and mitigation of poverty, with strengthening and facilitating household investments capable of preventing poverty and securing development in the longer term. The inclusion of programmes is on the basis of the availability of information on design features, evaluation, size, scope, or significance. Version 5 of the database updates information on existing programmes and incorporates information on pilot social assistance programmes in Latin America, Asia and Africa. It also adopts a new typology that distinguishes between social assistance programmes providing pure income transfers; programmes that provide transfers plus interventions aimed at human, financial, or physical asset accumulation; and integrated poverty reduction programmes. This new typology has, in our view, several advantages. It is a more flexible, and more accurate, template with which to identify key programme features. It provides a good entry point into the conceptual underpinnings of social assistance programmes

The IT Industry and Economic Development in India: A Critical Study

Many scholars have questioned the role of the IT industry in India’s economic development. Some have correctly highlighted the limited impact of IT firms in creating occupations accessible to less-educated people or the modest impact of industry output on the livelihoods of people from poorer households and communities. There are thus strong arguments against governments giving fiscal and industrial priority to the IT industry. However, this article explains why the state is unlikely to heed this redistributive agenda. It argues that state assistance to the IT industry has been predicated upon four main factors: India’s surplus of skilled and technically qualified young workers, the dominant role of software services within the IT industry, the formation of political relations between industrialists and state institutions and, finally, the crucial role of software service export earnings in the stabilisation of India’s external position. Even the uncertainty generated by the global financial crisis has, thus far, been unable to dislodge software service exports from their central role in India’s economic policymaking framework. Short of a radical change in the status quo, we are unlikely to see a commensurate change in policy settings

United by a common language? Trade union responses in the UK and India to call centre offshoring

The offshoring of business processes from the global North to low-cost countries of the global South has grown spectacularly in the current decade. Self-evidently, transnational relocation presents considerable challenges for organised labour since it suggests both a 'race to the bottom' in respect of pay, conditions and workers' rights and wholesale redundancies in the developed economies. This paper examines the specific case of the migration of call centres from the UK to India and trade union responses in both geographies. Informed by theoretical developments, insights and evidence from diverse disciplines and literatures, the authors concur particularly with Herod's conviction that union strategies to counter TNCs should not be counterposed between 'organising globally' and 'organising locally'and that 'organising at both scales simultaneously may best serve their goals'. Following reflection upon the nature of the call centre and consideration of important contradictions in the offshoring process, we present evidence of UK union responses ranging from the nationalistic, even xenophobic, to the internationalsist, and conclude that membership mobilisation on a principled basis has been key to the limited successes unions have achieved. The paper also evaluates developments in India and the emergence of an embryonic organisation UNITES which is attempting to organise its call centre and business process outsourcing (BPO) workforce.We conclude by considering the gap between the potential and the reality of effective internationally co-ordinated union activity

Investigating the effect of prior damage on the post-earthquake fire resistance of reinforced concrete portal frames

Post-earthquake fire (PEF) can lead to a rapid collapse of buildings that have been partially damaged as a result of a prior earthquake. Almost all standards and codes for the design of structures against earthquake ignore the risk of PEF, and thus buildings designed using those codes could be too weak when subjected to a fire after an earthquake. An investigation based on sequential analysis inspired by FEMA356 is performed here on the immediate occupancy (IO), life safety (LS) and collapse prevention (CP) performance levels of two portal frames, after they are pushed to arrive at a certain level of displacement corresponding to the mentioned performance level. This investigation is followed by a fire analysis of the damaged frames, examining the time taken for the damaged frames to collapse. As a point of reference, a fire analysis is also performed for undamaged frames and before the occurrence of earthquake. The results indicate that while there is minor difference between the fire resistances of the fire-alone situation and the frames pushed to the IO level of performance, a notable difference is observed between the fire-alone analysis and the frames pushed to arrive at LS and CP levels of performance and exposed to PEF. The results also show that exposing only the beams to fire results in a higher decline of the fire resistance, compared to exposing only the columns to fire. Furthermore, the results show that the frames pushed to arrive at LS and CP levels of performance collapse in a global collapse mode laterally, whereas at the IO level of performance and fire-alone situation, the collapse mechanism is mostly local through the collapse of beams. Whilst the investigation is conducted for a certain class of portal frames, the results confirm the need for the incorporation of PEF into the process of analysis and design, and provide some quantitative measures on the level of associated effects