High level expert group report on universal health coverage for India

Urgent and concrete actions addressing the social determinants of health are needed to move towards greater health equity in India, bridging gaps and reducing differentials in health by class, caste, gender and region across the country. Health-related areas include: nutrition and food security, water and sanitation, social inclusion to address concerns of gender, caste, religious and tribal minorities, decent housing, a clean environment, employment and work security, occupational safety and disaster management. This in-depth study /book covers health sector and institutional reforms, including financing mechanisms supporting expansion of public spending on health.The Department for International Development (DFID)The Planning Commission of IndiaThe Rockerfeller Foundatio

Monitoring for Nutrition Results in ICDS: Translating Vision into Action

This article focuses on the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), India's largest nutrition and early child development programme. It describes the political, organisational and technical challenges to building and sustaining an outcomes?oriented approach to nutrition monitoring in India. We show that the environment is conducive to strengthening nutrition programme monitoring and evaluation. Political commitment is growing, financial allocations have increased and there have been a number of reforms to strengthen the ICDS monitoring systems, but weaknesses remain. The article analyses seven technical challenges to improving the outcomes?orientation of ICDS and suggests steps that could be taken to improve monitoring

Planning a 'slum free' Trivandrum: housing upgrade and the rescaling of urban governance in India

This paper examines how India’s national urban development agenda is reshaping relationships between national, State and city-level governments. JNNURM, the flagship programme that heralded a new era of urban investment in India, contained a range of key governance aspirations: linking the analysis of urban poverty to city-level planning, developing holistic housing solutions for the urban poor, and above all empowering Urban Local Bodies to re-balance relationships between State and city-level governments in favour of the latter. Here, we trace JNNURM’s implementation in Kerala’s capital city, Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), where the city’s decentralised urban governance structure and use of ‘pro-poor’ institutions to implement housing upgrade programmes could have made it an exemplar of success. In practice, Trivandrum’s ‘city visioning’ exercises and the housing projects it has undertaken have fallen short of JNNURM’s lofty goals. The contradictions between empowering cities and retaining centralised control embedded within this national programme, and the unintended city-level consequences of striving for JNNURM funding success, have reshaped urban governance in ways not envisaged within policy. As a result, JNNURM has been important in rescaling governance relationships through three interlinked dynamics of problem framing, technologies of governance and the scalar strategy of driving reform ‘from above’ that together have ensured the national state’s continued influence over the practices of urban governance in India

Large?scale Investments in Agriculture in India

Public investment in agriculture has significant poverty?reducing effects. This article attempts to analyse trends in agricultural investments in India between the 1950s and the 2000s. It argues that public investment and expenditure on agriculture in India have grown only slowly and have not decisively increased even after more than 60 years of independence. While public capital formation and expenditure do show a moderate rise in the 2000s, a revival of India's agricultural growth requires a far greater thrust to public spending. Major and medium irrigation projects require special attention, as irrigation is instrumental not just in raising yields, but also the number of days of employment for labourers. Increasing public investment in agricultural research and extension is central to bridging the yield gap that persists. Formal credit flows to agriculture have to specifically target small and marginal farmers, and emphasis should move away from generating agricultural growth by channelling credit to agri?business firms and corporate players in agriculture. If India's second green revolution has to contribute to an accelerated reduction of poverty, hunger and malnourishment, it undoubtedly has to be a state?led project

Who do ICDS and PDS Exclude and What Can be Done to Change This?

This article looks at the specifics of who the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Public Distribution System (PDS) exclude and what can be done to change this. It discusses three different types of exclusion: official exclusion, typically from committing too few resources; implementation flaws; and flawed policy. The article argues that persistence with a poverty cutoff simply perpetuates exclusion. However, the progressive impact of improved judiciability of exclusion due to implementation flaws while making a case for tightening the system cannot be overstated. The article suggests three ways forward: (1) make rights desirable to encourage people to make claims and make ICDS and PDS more universal; (2) ensure that potential innovations such as biometrics, coupons and cash transfers empower the poor, not just the bureaucrats; and (3) empower citizens to fix the ICDS and PDS which will in turn help fix the overall food system

Understanding Community Colleges in the Indian Context

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136494/1/cc20242.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136494/2/cc20242_am.pd