How to Upgrade Housing in Informal Settlements?
According to recent estimates, South Asia is facing a shortage of 38 million housing units, largely affecting low and middle-income households. It comes as no surprise that informal settlements, slums and squatters are growing in all major urban centers across Asia to supplement the demand from urban poor. India alone has 52,000 slums inhabited by 14 percent of its total urban population. Almost, 50 percent of total population in Karachi, i.e. 7.6 million persons, lives in Katchi-Abadis. Bangladesh has 2,100 slums and more than 2 million slum dwellers in Dhaka. Even in Afghanistan, 80 percent of residents in capital city, Kabul, live in informal settlements.
Technology use in schools at reasonably large scale began in many OECD countries in earnest in the 1980s and then accelerated greatly in the 1990s, as the Internet and falling hardware prices helped convince education policymakers that the time was right to make large investments in ICTs. In most middle and low income countries, these processes began a little later, and have (until recently) proceeded more slowly. As a result, it was only about ten years ago, as education systems began to adopt and use ICTs in significant amounts (or planned to do so), that efforts to catalog and analyze what was happening in these sets of countries began in earnest. UNESCO-Bangkok's 
Considering the costs, it was never obvious to me how investments in a national identity program might add development value in a resource-crunched country like 
It was heartening to attend the recent 
Friday, March 15 is the deadline to join the World Bank in a call against gender-based violence. Participate in a text message contest for South Asian youth (18-25) – we want to hear your best ideas in response to the question, “What Will It Take to End Gender-Based Violence in South Asia?” 
The great artist Pablo Picasso once said, "The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls." It was with a similar vision that the 
As part of World Bank South Asia's "
One in every three women
As part of World Bank South Asia's "
