India

Powerless in Kanpur

Katiyabaaz - master of illegal connections

Documentary on the power crisis in Kanpur, a North Indian city.

“Kaatiyabaaz” is a compelling documentary film that highlights the power crisis in Kanpur, a city of three million people in north India.

It has all the elements of a steamy Hindi movie: 45-degree Celsius heat, power outages that last 12-15 hours, and illegal connections that come up every night and disappear in the morning. The everyday characters are gripping too. There’s a Robin-Hood-like street electrician who “provides power” by hooking to transmission lines. An upright bureaucrat (a woman, imagine that!) trying to get people to pay their bills and prevent theft. A city full of tired, angry citizens fed up with poor service provided. The film underlines how people will do whatever it takes to get some juice in their wires so that they can get lights, fans, water…the basic necessities of 20^th century life.

From the Annals of Puzzles: Why Indian Children Are More Stunted than African Children

I recently finished teaching smart and hard working honours students. In Growth and Development, we covered equity and talked about inequalities of opportunity (and outcomes) across countries, across regions within countries, between different ethnic groups, genders, etc. In Population and Labour Economics, we covered intra-household bargaining models and how spending on children may vary depending on the relative bargaining power of the parents.

Never Again! The Story of Cyclone Phailin

I have been visiting coastal Odisha for the past four years, earlier when we were preparing the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project (NCRMP) and subsequently during project implementation.

Every time the project team visited a village, the local community was always there to welcome us and talk about their experience during the 1999 cyclone, the community members they lost, the houses damaged, the devastation inflicted. This was an event that was firmly etched in their memories even 10 years later. Every site visit was followed by a small function wherein the local community mobilizing volunteers spoke about the preparedness work they were undertaking in collaboration with the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) and local community organizations. Almost every single meeting ended in their spoken resolve “Never Again!”

Pulling the Tablecloth Out From Under Development Efforts - Without Breaking a Glass

Residents return from storm shelters to Ganjam district in Odisha after Cyclone Phailan made landfall. ADRA India / European Commission When Cyclone Phailin struck the Indian states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh last week, the predictions were dire. In 1999, a cyclone of comparable strength took 10,000 lives.

While Phailin affected up to 8 million people, leaving approximately 600,00 homeless, death tolls are currently estimated to be in the low double digits. What made all the difference between 1999 and today? A much improved early warning system, effective evacuations, and the construction of shelters probably played a crucial role. Credible forecasts and early warnings were available for several days before landfall, and close to one million people were evacuated.

Everyone who still thinks disasters are ‘natural’ should stop and consider this for a minute. This difference in impact is a real world example of an analogy discussed at the 5^th Resilience Dialogue on Oct. 11, 2013. Here’s my interpretation:

Remember that old magic trick where a tablecloth is pulled off a fully set table but (almost) nothing falls over?

Mexico and India learn together how to grow while respecting the environment

Although 9000 miles apart, the states of Himachal Pradesh (India) and Quintana Roo (Mexico) have one thing in common: a vision and mission of promoting an economic growth that reaches as many people as possible while respecting the environment and the natural resources. This is what we call inclusive green growth.

Both the states are endowed with nature’s bounty and its curse: rich in biodiversity and the ecosystem services that it provides but highly vulnerable to the climate change and natural disasters and environmental degradation that development impacts bring.

Environmental sustainability and climate change resilience are thus a top priority, and it is no surprise that both the states are leaders and frontrunners in formulating green growth and development strategies in their respective countries.
It was therefore very apt for a delegation of senior officials from the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh to visit Quintana Roo to exchange ideas, share knowledge and best practices with their counterparts.

Good Practices for Engaging with Citizens for Greater Development Impact

Last week I was a panelist at a civil society organization seminar during the World Bank Annual Meetings on the topic of “Engaging with Citizens for Greater Development Impact.” The task for the panel was to discuss good practices in citizen engagement to make governments and service providers (including the private sector) more accountable so that policies and project interventions have greater impact for all citizens. The other panelists included representatives from Civicus, Plan International, and the Bank and International Finance Corporation.

The invitation to this event made me reflect on a fundamental question: Is it realistic to expect citizens to hold service providers accountable given the huge asymmetry of power between the two, or are we setting unrealistic expectations that citizen engagement interventions can improve development outcomes?

As I searched for answers, I was reminded of the story of the mighty warrior, Goliath, and the shepherd boy, David, who stepped up to fight him when no one else dared. No one in his or her right mind would have given David a chance against Goliath. However, we all know how the story ends — David hurls a stone from his sling with all his might and hits Goliath in the center of his forehead, causing the mighty to fall. Can we have similar happy endings in citizens vs. almighty service providers?

Connected and Healthy: Using ICTs to Improve People’s Health

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), including mobile phones, are increasingly seen as critical tools to improve public health and health outcomes in Africa. Several experiments, including some launched almost ten years ago, are starting to show progress:

In Rwanda, an mHealth system dubbed TRACnet monitors epidemic diseases. TRACnet has been financed since 2004 by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and Rwanda's Ministry of Health, and has helped track HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Health workers are equipped with a mobile phone and access TRACnet through SMS menu prompts, requiring them to document and monitor the status of patients in the health clinics under their jurisdiction. The system has helped create a registry of all health workers, their patients, rural clinic locations, staffing, assets, and medical supply inventories. Key factors in TRACnet’s success include sustained financing, scaling-up to all agents in all villages, and use by health workers in their daily work.

How can regional integration improve access to finance in South Asia?

South Asia is the least integrated region in the world. Intra-regional trade in South Asia is less than 2% of GDP compared to over 20% in East Asia. Labor mobility and regional travel is minimal, with few exceptions. Even remote communication is low – only 7% of international telephone calls in South Asia are to countries within the region, compared to 71% for East Asia. The case for closer integration has remained strong for a while now, and it is refreshing to see that some movement, albeit watchful, in addressing some of the region's deep rooted political economy issues, particularly between India and Pakistan.

The discussions around closer integration have centered on energy, trade, connectivity and stability. All of these offer strong potential to enhance growth in the region. However, financial sector integration overall, and access to finance in particular, hardly ever make it to the agenda of regional integration forums and deliberations. This is unfortunate, because the region has a long way to go in providing adequate access to financial services and insurance products, especially to the vulnerable segments of the population. Given that South Asia is home to more than half a billion of the world’s poor, this becomes a poverty reduction goal as much as a financial inclusion goal.

Ending the shame and stigma of poverty

A forthcoming book (The Shame of it: Global Perspectives on Anti-poverty Policy, Gubrium E. K., Pellissery S. and Lodemel I., Policy Press, 2013), the first of a series reporting on a stream of field surveys in developed and developing countries, draws attention on the social, political and psychological (in one word human) dimensions of poverty and stresses the risk that anti-poverty policies and programs inadvertently stigmatize their beneficiaries and aggravate their own shame.

Is it just a matter of teaching poor people their rights? An information campaign for India’s NREGA

It is often the case that poor people do not fully access the public services due to them. Information-based interventions have been proposed as a response. The premise is that lack of information is a decisive demand-side factor inhibiting successful participatory action by poor people to get the services to which they are entitled.

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