Young Lives Round 2 Survey Report Initial Findings: Andhra Pradesh, India

This report contains initial findings of the Young Lives survey (round 2)using quantitative methods, for Andhra Pradesh India. The survey was carried out in 2006/7 and has a sample of 3000 children spread across 2 cohorts. Young Lives is an international longitudinal study funded mainly by the DFID (UK), aiming to understand the causes and consequences of childhood poverty.childhood poverty; India; young lives; longitudinal

EMPOWERING POOR RURAL WOMEN IN INDIA: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM ANDHRA PRADESH

Even though overall growth in India has recently accelerated, it has largely bypassed rural areas and agriculture; in fact it is agreed that the ratio of rural to urban poverty has increased. As a consequence, some of the marginalized groups in a society that is already characterized by a high level of inequality in opportunities and segregation along lines of, gender, caste, and social status, are widely reckoned to not have benefited from overall growth. To enable women and backwards castes to expand their livelihood opportunities, a vast range of government programs have been initiated and large amounts of resources are being channeled to poor areas. An increasingly popular approach to do so relies on the concept of Community Driven Development (CDD) whereby resources are made available to encourage formation of savings groups at the local level and, once they have attained a certain degree of maturity, the channeling to such groups of funds (either as a credit or a grant) which they can use for small projects aimed to improve their livelihood. This paper uses one of the earliest projects of this type, the Andhra Pradesh (AP) District Initiatives Project, a US $ 250 Mn intervention that was started in 2000, to provide an initial assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the CDD approach. One of the interesting characteristics of the CDD approach is its desire to combine interventions to increase food security and deal with immediate needs with social mobilization to overcome long-standing patterns of discrimination and prejudices and attention to longer-term economic needs. Two interesting aspects of the AP program that greatly facilitate assessment of impact is the fact that only women's groups were eligible and that even in cases where it built on pre-existing group structures, the project aimed to establish second-tier organizations at the village and mandal (county) level which, by pooling the resources of individual groups aimed to significantly expand their ability to respond to shocks. It is therefore possible to compare between women and men in the project area, as well as between pre-existing groups in areas affected by the project and in areas that were not eligible, to assess project impacts. To do so, we rely on a comprehensive set of surveys that included 2,700 households (with separate questionnaires being administered to men and women in the household), 2,200 self help groups, and 200 village organizations in both project and control areas conducted in mid-2004. In addition to the standard issues, the questionnaire elicited retrospective information on most issues so as to be able to compare differences in differences between project and control areas. It also contained an elaborate section on social empowerment, participation in groups, and actual as well as hypothetical borrowing capacity. The issues to be addressed are, first, to what extent the project succeeded in improving the governance structure of the community organizations involved;, second to what extent women have been empowered to overcome social barriers that have traditionally stymied their economic advancement, and finally to what extent the project has led to an increase in levels of income and productivity. We use simple t-tests of differences in differences to assess whether areas or groups (women) targeted by the project have advanced significantly more than others. For such differences to translate into significant improvements for the poor, it is necessary that the program is able to target poorer segments in the overall population or those who are organized in self-help groups. Participation regressions indeed confirm that, by focusing on the poorest areas and by aiming to include poorer parts of the population, the project has been able to significantly expand the range of households organized in self-help groups and to target support for institutional strengthening towards the most needy. Comparison between pre-existing groups in intervention and control areas points towards significantly different rates of improvements in terms of group management and internal controls (e.g. members being fined for non-attendance, internal bookkeeping being of high quality). These, together with the federated structure, appear to have allowed groups in intervention areas to significantly expand the availability of credit to members and to access loans by other financial institutions. Second-tier institutions in self help group federations were able to take on completely new activities (e.g. taking over distribution of subsidized food grains from "fair price shops" which were had often remained out of the reach of the poor) that significantly improved participants' ability to smooth consumption. This is supported by evidence from the household level suggesting that, even though the incidence of shocks was higher for households in treatment areas than outside, households were able to deal with such shocks more easily than they had been able to in the past. The hypothesis that the improvement in access to credit can be attributed to the project is supported by the finding that the unambiguous and significant increase in the amount which women in areas eligible for the project as compared to those that were not, were able to borrow both from the formal and the informal sector is not matched by a commensurate increase in credit availability for men. To the contrary, credit access for men was higher in areas not eligible for the project (marginally significant) as compared to areas that were eligible. The logic of the project to use improved access to resources to empower women and overcome social barriers is corroborated by the fact that the change in the share of women who receive high respect in their family and who were not subject to domestic violence was indeed significantly lower in control than in intervention areas where women also have significantly higher participation in family matters relating to income generating activities, debt and savings, as well as family planning and the number of children. In fact, the improvements in women's participation seem to transcend the realm of the family and extent to the community level: the change in the share of women who always know of or participate in village assemblies, who are aware of other types of community institutions, and who are able to freely interact with government officials and villagers of other caste or religion is significantly higher in intervention than in control villages. While all of this suggests that the project has not only improved access to credit and risk diversification but also significantly increased women's empowerment, these significant effects were, however, not matched by increased beneficiary savings, possibly because the resources generated by productive activities initiated under the project are yet to mature. To explore this, a closer look at the extent to which the project has increased access of the poor to resources and/or enabled them to use these resources more effectively. Even though productivity of resource use is similar between areas eligible and non-eligible for the project, there is clear evidence that the project has helped to significantly expand the share of households who own productive assets. The key challenge to ensure sustainability and replicability of the intervention is thus to match the rather impressive performance in terms of social empowerment with an equally significant transfer of technical skills that would, by facilitating more productive use of such assets, put participants economic basis on a stronger footing. The ability to use the federated structure to provide effective technical assistance and to liaise with line ministries to ensure that services are available to the poor, the feasibility of which has been demonstrated in a number of individual cases, is likely to be a key issue in doing so.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Impact of the NREGS on Schooling and Intellectual Human Capital

This paper uses a quasi-experimental framework to analyze the impact of India’s largest public works program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), on schooling enrollment, grade progression, reading comprehension test scores, writing test scores, math test scores and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) scores. The availability of pre and two rounds of post-intervention initiation data from the three rounds of the Young Lives Panel Study allow us to measure both the short- and medium-run intent-to-treat effects of the program. We find that the program has no effect on enrollment but has strong positive effects on grade progression, reading comprehension test scores, math test scores and PPVT scores. The average effect size computed over several outcomes is similar to the effects of conditional cash transfer programs implemented in Latin America. These short-run impact estimates all increased in the medium run, that is, there is no decaying of impact but instead medium-run augmentation of the estimated short-run effects. The findings reported here are robust to attrition bias, endogenous program placement, type I errors and type II errors

China’s Sudan engagement: changing Northern and Southern political trajectories in peace and war

China has developed a more consequential role in Sudan over the past two decades, during which it has become bound up in the combination of enduring violent internal instability and protracted external adversity that has characterized the politics of the central state since the 1989 Islamist revolution. Two inter-related political trajectories of China’s Sudan engagement are examined here. The first concerns Beijing’s relations with the ruling National Congress party in incorporating China into its domestic politics and foreign relations amidst war in Darfur, to which Beijing has responded through a more engaged political role. The second confronts the practical limitations of China’s sovereignty doctrine and exclusive reliance upon relations with the central state. Following the peace agreement of 2005 that ended the North–South war, and motivated by political imperatives linked to investment protection concerns, China has developed new relations with the semi-autonomous Government of Southern Sudan, thus seeking to position itself to navigate Sudan’s uncertain political future

Evaluation of Genetic Diversity and Heritability of Some Rapeseed (Brassica Napus) Genotypes Using Agronomical and Molecular Traits

High level of heritability and variability were estimated for all traits among genotypes. The genetic similarity of nine genotypes Brassica napus was estimated by random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD), which ranged from 69% to 94%. The phylogenetic tree resulted in two different clusters; the first including two genotypes which also showed high similarity in agronomic traits and the second included the rest of the genotypes. The genetic diversity was discussed in relation to molecular and agronomical traits. High and positive correlation were recorded for all traits. The high coupled of heritability and variability is considered as a powerful source for the selection of donors in the breeding program, where the genetic gain depends on the availability of genetic variation and high heritability

Young Lives Round 2 Survey Report Initial Findings: Andhra Pradesh, India

This report contains initial findings of the Young Lives survey (round 2)using quantitative methods, for Andhra Pradesh India. The survey was carried out in 2006/7 and has a sample of 3000 children spread across 2 cohorts. Young Lives is an international longitudinal study funded mainly by the DFID (UK), aiming to understand the causes and consequences of childhood poverty

Growth recovery and faltering through early adolescence in low- and middle-income countries: Determinants and implications for cognitive development

Child chronic undernutrition, as measured by stunting, is prevalent in low- and middle-income countries and is among the major threats to child development. While stunting and its implications for cognitive development have been considered irreversible beyond early childhood there is a lack of consensus in the literature on this, as there is some evidence of recovery from stunting and that this recovery may be associated with improvements in cognition. Less is known however, about the drivers of growth recovery and the aspects of recovery linked to cognitive development. In this paper we investigate the factors associated with growth recovery and faltering through age 12 years and the implications of the incidence, timing, and persistence of post-infancy recovery from stunting for cognitive development using longitudinal data from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. We find that the factors most systematically associated with accelerated growth both before and after early childhood and across countries include mother's height, household living standards and shocks, community wages, food prices, and garbage collection. Our results suggest that post-infancy recovery from stunting is more likely to be systematically associated with higher achievement scores across countries when it is persistent and that associations between growth trajectories and cognitive achievement in middle childhood do not persist through early adolescence across countries. Overall, our findings indicate that growth after early childhood is responsive to changes in the household and community environments and that growth promotion after early childhood may yield improvements in child cognitive development

Socio-economic assessement of farmers' vulnerability as water users subject to global change stressors in the hard rock area of southern India. The SHIVA ANR project

International audienceDemand for vulnerability assessments is growing in policy-making circles, to support the choice of appropriate measures and policies to reduce the vulnerability of water users and resources. Through the SHIVA ANR project, we are seeking a method to assess and map the vulnerability of farmers in southern India to both climate and socioeconomic changes, and secondly, to assess the costs and benefits associated with trends farmers' vulnerability in the medium and long-term. The project is focusing on southern India 's hard rock area, as in the geological context, both surface and ground water resources are naturally limited. We are also focusing on farming populations as these are the main water users in the area and rely exclusively on groundwater. The area covers southern India's semi-arid zone, where the rainfall gradient ranges from 600 mm to 1100 mm. Vulnerability is expected to vary according to local climatic conditions but also the socioeconomic characteristics of farming households. The SHIVA research team has been divided into six thematic groups in order to address the different scientific issues : downscaling the regional climate scenario, farm area projections, vulnerability assessments and quantification, vulnerability mapping, hydrological modelling and upscaling, and vulnerability impact assessements. Our approach is multidisciplinary to cater for for numerous inherent themes, and integrated to cater for vulnerability as a dynamic and multidimensional concept. The project 's first results after 10 months of research are presented below