Reorienting development: towards and engendered employment strategy

Development strategies, in the name of gender-neutral, are gender-blind. The gender blindness of development strategies are derived from the gender-insensitiveness of dominant development paradigms, which, in the name of work, do not make any distinction between productive and reproductive work and does not differentiate, in the name of household, the asymmetries faced by its different members on the basis of sex. Given the nature of gender blindness of development strategies, it is clear that issues related to work and employment are at the core of it. For example, if work done by women within households and for the care economy continues to be not properly valued and compensated for, development strategies would be biased against women. If labour supply functions continue to exclude the trade-off between productive and reproductive functions of women, employment strategies would be partial. The failure to recognize the differentiated position of women within households in terms of opportunities also has adverse implications on work, employment and incomes of women. Female employment is crucial for equitable growth and poverty reduction. Enhanced female employment and income also contribute to better priority setting and resource allocation within families, as women are more prudent. Women, however, have been found to be concentrated in lowpaying, low productive jobs, they account for major part of temporary, part-time and precarious employment. An employment-friendly strategy is not necessarily gendersensitive. Engendering employment strategy would require reorienting the macro policies, the incentive mechanisms and catering to specific needs of women as they juggle between their productive and reproductive roles, and protecting their rights and safety as workers.Development, Gender, Poverty, Economic policies

The MDGs Beyond 2015

With six years to go, the world has a mixed record with regard to the achievement of the MDGs – a set of time?bound quantitative development targets the world set for itself in 2000 to reduce human poverty. The progress towards the MDGs has been halted because of recent food, fuel and financial crises. This article portrays a picture for beyond 2015. It identifies six distinctive issues: sets of goals and targets; assessment of needs; policies and strategies; resources and coordination; monitoring progress and gaps; reporting. The article argues that beyond 2015, the present set of MDG goals and targets will need to be re?evaluated and reminds us that the 2010 review of the MDGs provides a unique opportunity to the whole world not only to accelerate MDG efforts for 2010–15, but also to initiate a discussion of these issues in preparation for beyond 2015

Skill formation and precarious labor: the historical role of the industrial training institutes in India 1950-2018

This paper explores the historical and ideological contestations over the meaning, nature and scope of industrial skill training in state-sponsored Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in their attempts to create a disciplined and committed labour force in India. Through a combination of conceptual insights drawn from Indian labour historiography and ethnographic participant research, the paper addresses the challenges faced by ITIs in maintaining a unified, centralized vision for industrial skill-training of workers under conditions of vastly uneven geographical development of the industrial sector and progressively intense interregional capital mobility in contemporary India

A Latin American Perspective to Agricultural Ethics

The mixture of political, social, cultural and economic environments in Latin America, together with the enormous diversity in climates, natural habitats and biological resources the continent offers, make the ethical assessment of agricultural policies extremely difficult. Yet the experience gained while addressing the contemporary challenges the region faces, such as rapid urbanization, loss of culinary and crop diversity, extreme inequality, disappearing farming styles, water and land grabs, malnutrition and the restoration of the rule of law and social peace, can be of great value to other regions in similar latitudes, development processes and social problems. This chapter will provide a brief overview of these challenges from the perspective of a continent that is exposed to the consequences of extreme inequality in multiple dimensions and conclude by arguing for the need to have a continuous South-South dialogue on the challenges of establishing socially and environmentally sustainable food systems

The New Global MPI 2018: Aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals

Early in 2018, the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report Office (HDRO) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) agreed to adjust and unify their methodologies on poverty measurement and consider indicator improvements, in order to better monitor the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper sets out the specifications of a joint global Multidimensional Poverty Index first published in 2018, which is an internationally comparable measure of acute poverty that captures the multiple deprivations poor people experience with respect to health, education and living standards. It builds on the original MPI launched in 2010, and an innovative MPI launched in 2014. The best features of both of these are subsumed in the joint global MPI 2018, which also reflects new data possibilities to better align the global MPI to the Sustainable Development Goals. Because the objective of revising the MPI to create a more credible and legitimate measure of multidimensional poverty that enables comparisons across countries using existing data was challenging to realize, the paper first sets out five key principles for a global poverty measure related to data coverage, communicability, comparability, disaggregation, and robustness. Drawing on expert interventions, a global consultation, empirical trials, and these principles, the paper then explains conceptually the motivation and nature of adjustments that were made to five of the ten included indicators. It also recognizes desirable changes that could not be made due to data constraints – for example including data on the environment, work, and security, or on intrahousehold inequalities. And it identifies key issues for future research related to household composition and the use of land and livestock variables

AN EVALUATION OF GOVERNMENT RICE PROCUREMENT PROGRAMME IN SELECTED AREAS OF BANGLADESH

Government Boro procurement programme was evaluated with the help of primary data collected from different upazilas under Bogra and Naogaon districts during 2001. Additionally, secondary data were obtained from different sources. Farmers and millers directly sold paddy and rice respectively to the procurement centre. Faria and Bepari did not sell paddy or rice directly to the procurement centre but they formed a complex channel in procurement of rice in the study areas. Large differences were observed between procurement price and market price and procurement price and cost of production in different years. The highest difference between procurement price and market price was observed in the month of May for paddy and June for rice. Positive relationship was observed between the percentage of marketed surplus procured and market price of paddy. Small farmers sold the highest proportion of their surplus to the procurement centre compared with large farmers. The cost of selling paddy to procurement centre was more than double as much as the cost involved in selling paddy in the market. Majority of millers were not satisfied with the size of quota received for Boro rice. The factors such as marketed surplus, experience, education, metalled road and distance of procurement centre were found to influence the participation of farmers in procurement programme. The major reasons for not selling paddy to the procurement centre by farmers were lengthy procedure, loss of time and high transportation cost