Do MDGs Matter? India's Development Trajectory in the 21st Century

Current discourse on post?2015 development goals needs to be situated in the context of the influence of MDGs in shaping national policies and programmes. In this article, India's development trajectory and its impacts are critically analysed to demonstrate the near absence of influence of MDGs discourse on Indian development planning or outcomes. The analysis also focuses on the political economy of India's development trajectory and identifies absence of governance reforms as the key deficit in meaningful impacts on the lives of people in India. In sharp contrast to the High Level Panel's recommendations on post?2015, the author proposes an alternative set of goals focusing on reforming governance in India

Swajaldhara: ‘Reversed’ Realities in Rural Water Supply in India

For the last two decades and more, nations, international organisations and civil society, both local and global, have been rallying for the cause of ‘efficient’ and ‘equitable’ water supply and distribution. To this end, the New Delhi Statement, a precursor to the Dublin Statement, in many ways marks the first step in reforming the water sector. This article explores how ideas of community ownership and participation lauded in the New Delhi Statement and reiterated in the Dublin Statement later translate into practice when they meet the complex sociopolitical and institutional realities at the ground. It locates the genesis of Swajaldhara, the flagship rural water reform programme in India, the origin of which can be traced to the Delhi?Dublin configuration and shows how a success model became a story of poor implementation defined in the language of ‘gaps and slippages’ or ‘policy reversals’. It argues further that the objective of ‘Some for All’ still remains a target yet to be achieved in many parts of the country. The work underlines the disconnect between the global paradigms and local manifestations of such ideas and investigates the reasons for the same. Based on field research in two villages of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, the article unpacks the processes that lead to policy?practice dichotomy

Revitalising Agriculture in Eastern India: Investment and Policy Priorities

This article examines the priority accorded to agriculture and allied sectors in India's public expenditure over the last two decades, with specific attention to budgetary spending by the eastern region states. It observes that one of the important reasons for the slowdown of growth in Indian agriculture seems to have been the stagnation in public expenditure on the overall rural economy (i.e. Agriculture and Allied Activities, Irrigation and Flood Control, Village and Small Industries, Rural Development and Special Area Programmes) since the early 1990s. The falling priority given to the rural economy in the last three Five Year Plans of the country would have affected the eastern region states more adversely due to their weaker fiscal health and less developed agricultural sectors. The article also argues that there is a need to redesign the policy framework and provide adequate budgetary support for agricultural activities in dryland/rainfed areas in the eastern region states

Child Under-weight and Agricultural Productivity in India: Implications for Public Provisioning and Women’s Agency

This study is part of the ongoing research program on Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) funded by UK Aid from the Department for International Development, UK. The authors are consultants or regular staff of M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, India, one of the six partner institutions of LANSA.A recent global hunger index indicated a 12 percent decline in child underweight rates. This study attempts an empirical explanation of the factors that influence child underweight rates at the district level. Agricultural land productivity, share of women educated above the secondary level and participating in work, maternal, and child health seem to contribute to the reduction in child underweight. However government health and water supply facilities turn out to be ineffective

Adapting Smallholder Agriculture to Climate Change

Agriculture and climate change are mutually impacted. The worst affected are the small and marginal farmers who constitute more than 70 per cent of the farming community in India. Extreme weather events like increased frequency of heatwaves and cold spells, droughts and floods in the last decade have become common. In India agriculture contributes about 28 per cent of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; about 78 per cent of methane and nitrous oxide emissions are estimated to be due to the current agricultural practices. Sustainable agriculture approaches are now acknowledged for the wide range of ecological and economic benefits that accrue to the practitioners as well as consumers of agricultural products. These approaches, based on low external inputs, are also less energy?intensive and less polluting and so mitigate and help in adapting to climate change. Combined with coordinated action by groups or communities at the local level, and supportive external institutions working in partnership with farmers, sustainable agriculture will help to mitigate and adapt to climate change

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

How Can India Help Prevent Food Price Volatility?

This article is about India's role in reducing food price volatility in the world. India has come a long way from a ‘ship?to?mouth existence’ to a country that is ready to confer legal right to food to its citizens based on its own production. India has 18 per cent of the world's population and therefore food self?sufficiency of India would be a blessing for the struggle against price volatility. By improving productivity, by reducing energy use, by augmenting water resources and by conserving prime farm land, India can produce enough food for an estimated population of 1.5 billion by 2030. Further, by controlling speculative trade in food prices, by maintaining stable domestic prices and by sharing its agricultural and food policy expertise, India can help reduce food price volatility. However, to reduce global price volatility and to remove price distortions in the world market, it is important to resolve the issues of agricultural trade and to adopt a small farmer?friendly global trading system

Going to scale with Community-Led Total Sanitation: reflections on experience, issues and ways forward

Perhaps as many as 2 billion people living in rural areas are adversely affected by open defecation (OD). Those who suffer most from lack of toilets, privacy and hygiene are women, adolescent girls, children and infants. Sanitation and hygiene in rural areas have major potential for enhancing human wellbeing and contributing to the MDGs. Approaches through hardware subsidies to individual households have been ineffective. Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is a revolutionary approach in which communities are facilitated to conduct their own appraisal and analysis of open defecation (OD) and take their own action to become ODF (open defecation-free). In six of the countries where CLTS has been spread – Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Kenya – approaches differ organisationally with contrasting combinations of NGOs, projects and governments. Practical elements in strategies for going to scale have included: training and facilitating; starting in favourable conditions; conducting campaigns and encouraging competition; recruiting and committing teams and full-time facilitators and trainers; organising workshops and cross-visits; supporting and sponsoring Natural Leaders and community consultants; inspiring and empowering children, youth and schools; making use of the market and promoting access to hardware; verifying and certifying ODF status; and finding and supporting champions at all levels. To spread CLTS well requires continuous learning, adaptation and innovation. It faces challenges. Paradigmatically, it requires major institutional, professional and personal shifts. Opposition at senior levels, pressures to disburse large budgets, demands to go to scale rapidly, and programmes to subsidise hardware for individual rural households, have been and remain threats and obstacles. Issues for review, reflection and research include: diversity, definition and principles; synergies with complementary approaches; scale, speed and quality; creative diversity; and physical, social and policy sustainability. In seeking constructive ways forward, four key themes or thrusts are: methodological development and action learning; creative innovation and critical awareness; learning and action alliances and networks, with fast learning across communities, districts and countries; and seeking to seed self-spreading or light touch movements. A key to good spread is finding, supporting and multiplying champions, at all levels, and then their vision, commitment and courage

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