Tag: India

Reviving multilateralism

The Time Has Come for Multi-dimensional Development Metrics – India’s G20 Presidency

By G A Tadas, Visiting Fellow, Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), New Delhi, India. Views expressed are personal.

GDP has long served as the key indicator of a country’s development, but is this the only factor that matters in citizens’ lives? Does more money categorically result in better lives?  The India G20 presidency is looking for other metrics to complement these measures.

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Development Matters
Asia, Green transition

Can electric vehicles drive climate change action in India?

By Trupti Deshpande, Former Senior Associate and Spurthi Ravuri, Senior Associate, Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP)

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the transportation sector globally, pushing more people away from public transport and towards privately owned cars. How has it impacted emissions in India and can electric vehicles be the answer to “cleaner and greener” transportation?

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Development Matters
India G20
Reviving multilateralism

India at the helm of the G20

By Ambassador Dr. Mohan Kumar, Former Indian Ambassador to France and Dean/Professor, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India

On 1 December, India assumed the presidency of the G20 for the first time.  This is a momentous event for India and for the G20, at a crucial time in the world.

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Development Matters
Asia, Covid-19, Development in Transition, Reviving multilateralism

The European Union as a development superpower

By Ambassador Dr Mohan Kumar, Chairman, RIS, Dean/Professor, Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India, Former Indian Ambassador to France1

It is a truism that the European Union (EU) welcomes, prefers and supports a multipolar world; a strategic world view that is fully shared by its partners like India. More fundamentally, it is in the interest of the EU and its like-minded partners to ensure that the international order is not underpinned by a G2 system of government where the rules are essentially shaped by the US and China. This, however, entails the EU being strong enough to occupy an independent pole in the multipolar system. The EU is not quite there yet, but its friends and partners will certainly wish this to occur, sooner rather than later.

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Development Matters
Asia, Covid-19, Migration, New social contract

Public health and migration: from the Postcolonial era to COVID-19

By Ranabir Samaddar, Distinguished Chair in Migration and Forced Migration Studies, Calcutta Research Group

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.
Photo: Juan Alberto Casado, Shutterstock

I wrote The Postcolonial Age of Migration in 2016-2019. It came out just two months ago as the pandemic continued (and continues) to rage in India and around the world. Global mobility came to a screeching halt and I have not yet seen the book in print. Locked down in my house and aware that the book had come out, I was driven to reflect on what I had written: did I do justice to our age, which I had described as the postcolonial age of migration? The book time and again goes back to colonial histories of war, plunder, changes in land use pattern, peasant dispossession, primitive accumulation, and their continuities in our time. Against this backdrop, the book discusses how the colonial practices of violence and border building are being reproduced today on a global scale. Wars, famines, and ecological changes are major driving factors behind migration and forced migration flows today. They also influence patterns of labour mobility. Yet as I reflected, the overwhelming reality of the COVID-19 pandemic brought home the realisation that the book does not account for epidemiological disasters as an integral part of the colonial history of migration and the postcolonial age of migration. The absence of any concern for migrant workers and refugees in public health structures should have been discussed. The book speaks of refugees’ health concerns in camps, yet the broader perspective of migrants and public health is absent.

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Development Matters
Asia, Policy

Look East instead of West for the future global middle class

By Kristofer Hamel, Chief Operating Officer, and Baldwin Tong, Research Analyst, World Data Lab

Poverty is declining worldwide. Yet, reducing poverty is not equivalent to a rising middle class. A large share of the world’s population earns between USD 2 and USD 11 a day (in 2011 purchasing power parity). Only once people start earning more than USD 11 do they tend to have enough extra spending power to make purchases that go beyond basic needs and therefore enter the global middle class. First-time middle-class purchases include personal transportation (motorcycles), housing (first-time renting or low-end purchases), finance (first savings account or loan) and education (tertiary).

Over the next decade, middle-class spending power will shift from west to east due to the huge growth in the middle-class segments (USD 11-USD 110 per day) of India and China. The middle classes of these two countries will represent over 83% of their respective country’s spending power, meaning that businesses should consider their tastes and preferences. Combined, the world’s two most populous countries are expected to represent over 43.3% of the global middle class by 2030.

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Development Matters29 Comments
Asia

Opportunities and Challenges in Southeast Asia, China and India

BannerForumAsiaMobile_ENBy Mario Pezzini, former Director, OECD Development Centre, and Special Advisor to the OECD Secretary-General on Development, and Kensuke Tanaka, Head of Asia Desk, OECD Development Centre

Learn more about this timely topic at the upcoming
1st International Economic Forum on Asia
Register today to attend on 14 April 2017!

Mario-KantsukeStrong growth – averaging 6.2% per year – is expected in Emerging Asia (Southeast Asia, China and India) over 2017-21, though trends vary across the region. While growth in China is projected to continue slowing, it will still average 6.0% over the medium term, below the 6.7% forecast for 2016. India, on the other hand, will average 7.3% annual growth in the years to 2021. The ten ASEAN member countries together are forecast to average growth of 5.1%, led by the CLM countries (Cambodia, Lao PDR and Myanmar), which will all see annual growth rates above 7%. Amongst the large ASEAN-5 economies, the highest growth rates are projected for Viet Nam (6.2%) and the Philippines (6.1%) over 2017-21. Singapore and Brunei Darussalam are both expected to see growth of 1.8% in the medium term. Private consumption is expected to continue to be an important driver of growth across much of the region, particularly with slow export growth (Figure 1):  Continue reading “Opportunities and Challenges in Southeast Asia, China and India”

Development Matters
Asia, Gender, Women and Girls, Human Development, New social contract

Changing social norms through entertainment education: the case of a soap opera in India

By Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director, Population Foundation of India

 

poonam-muttre
A promotional activity is held for Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon, in Bhourikala Village, India’s state of Madhya Pradesh

“You forced me into marriage. I wanted to study.”
“What difference is that gonna make! Are you going to be the Prime Minister?”
“Yes. I will become the Prime Minister.”

This powerful exchange between key characters in a soap opera demonstrates reel life emulating real life.
In 2011, the Population Foundation of India (PFI) set out to use the soap opera Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon (MKBKSH) or I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything as the centre of a transmedia initiative that leverages the power of entertainment education to change social norms. At the heart of the soap opera are the struggles and triumphs of Sneha, a doctor working in Mumbai, as she journeys from the city to her village, emotionally torn between family and society, between professional aspirations and personal commitment.

But why pursue entertainment education and what has been the experience?

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Development Matters2 Comments
Asia

Developing countries and the renewable energy revolution

By Prof. John A. Mathews, Professor of Strategy at Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney, Australia and author of Greening of Capitalism

There was a time when arguments about development and energy were seen as different discourses. They came together in the familiar call for poor people in developing countries to have access to electricity. As for energy needed for industrialisation, fossil fuels – with all their burdens on the balance of payments and geopolitical entanglements – were tapped to fill the need.

To be sure, the Western world as it industrialised over the past 200 years enjoyed enormous benefits from fossil fuels. The transition to a carbon-based economy liberated economies from age-old Malthusian constraints. For a group of select countries representing a small slice of the global population, burning fossil fuels enabled an era of explosive growth, ushering in dramatic improvements in productivity, income, wealth and living standards. Continue reading “Developing countries and the renewable energy revolution”

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Asia

Appeasement Politics of Delhi’s Urban Governance

By Shailaja Chandra, Former Permanent Secretary of the Government of India and former Chief Secretary, Delhi; Former Executive Director, National Population Stabilisation Fund, India

Delhi is among the world’s top ten most populous cities with 18 million people. United Nations projections for 2025 predict that it will rank third, overtaking Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Dhaka, New York and Shanghai. Colossal challenges confront the city’s development, and finding money is the least of those problems. Delhi garners more resources than any other city in India, has the highest per capita income and wages, and boasts more private vehicles than the three metropolitans of Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai combined. In early 2015, the new city government slashed the power tariff in half and provided 20 000 litres of free water for all residents — clearly affordable measures. Continue reading “Appeasement Politics of Delhi’s Urban Governance”

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