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Voices of Youth: What Does India Need to Get Back to a High Growth Trajectory?

Amrita Chowdhury's picture

India today is the fourth largest economy in the world. But for the country to sustain a growth rate of close to 6%, it remains vulnerable to the vicissitudes of global investors. It’s time to ponder: why it is not the other way round? How can India reach a position where we not only follow the rise and fall of global economic forces but also lead the way in sustaining the global economy? This is my dream.

Improving Ongoing Flagship Programs:
-The monitoring of all flagship projects should be improved right from the Gram Panchayat level to the state and central level.
-Models need to be developed for every flagship program, success factors studied, and implementation aligned with the specific needs of each state.
-All program implementation officers should be trained by those who have worked in successful programs. Pay should be linked with performance.
-Resource reallocation should depend on progress and work load.
-All unsuccessful programs should be analyzed to understand the main causes for failure and alternatives planned.
-Benchmark studies should be conducted to identify critical indicators for development in education, health and infrastructure and year on year progress checked.

Prospects Daily: Crude oil prices fall from 9-week high

Important developments today:

1. Crude oil prices fall from 9-week high

2. German producer price inflation falls to lowest in two years

Washington’s Cherry Blossoms: The Gift that Keeps Giving

Dan Hoornweg's picture

Cherry Trees, Washington, DCOne of the best things about living in Washington DC is riding your bike to work, early in the morning, past the blossoming cherry trees along the tidal basin. Sometimes you have to actually stop for a moment, the trees are so beautiful. Thank you, Governor (Mayor) Ozaki Yukio: He gave the trees to the up and coming Washington DC in 1912.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the City of Tokyo’s original gift of 3020 cherry trees. You would be hard pressed to find a more perfect gift, or a more perfect example of how the cities we live in, and the globally-minded ones overseas, improve our day-to-day quality of life.

Should we be promoting tourism sector investment?

When most people think of tourism, they think about a vacation to a new destination, an island retreat, a beautiful vineyard, or a hike in the mountains. They rarely think of tourism as a source of inclusive poverty reduction in the developing world. 

Nkwichi Lodge in Mozambique is a good example. Investments to the projects created 75 jobs for locals supporting over 1,000 community members. It also established a community trust that built five local schools, a maternity clinic and a maize mill that provided nutrition and education to more than 350 farmers and their families. This is having a transformative impact on poverty reduction and improvements in the quality of life of some of the worlds poorest.  

Welcome to Africa, Welcome to Naija

Pierre Strauss's picture

Backpackers looking for an intense experience are constantly looking for new regions to explore. While Asia is nowadays swamped by mass tourism, and Western destinations lack originality, Africa remains the ultimate well-kept secret for unconventional tourism – tourists are heading into the rain forests of Madagascar and on safari in South Africa. But hurry up because more and more folks are traveling south.

Pierre Strauss (right) with Abubakar Wakili in Kano state, NigeriaDespite the economic downturn and a general decline in tourism worldwide, tourism in Africa is growing faster than in the rest of the world. African tourism arrivals grew from 37 million in 2003 to 58 million in 2009. The continent receives more tourists than the Caribbean, Central America, and South America combined. For instance, in Nigeria-the most populous country in Africa-we welcome more than three million visitors annually, largely business men from neighboring countries and the Nigerian Diaspora visiting friends and relatives.

ปลาหมึกพอลพยากรณ์เศรษฐกิจไทย: เคลื่อนไหวด้วยหนวดเส้นเดียว

Frederico Gil Sander's picture

 

Image courtesy of Caitfoto through a Creative Commons license
(Originally posted in English)

หลังจากที่คณะผู้จัดทำรายงานตามติดเศรษฐกิจไทยของธนาคารโลกได้รับความช่วยเหลือจากทั้งหมอดูลายมือเขมรและหมอดูกระดองเต่าผู้โด่งดัง ให้สามารถจัดทำตัวเลขประมาณการด้านเศรษฐกิจของไทยในปี 2553 ให้เสร็จสมบูรณ์ไปแล้วเมื่อเดือนเมษายนที่ผ่านมา    ทีมงานของเราก็แอบไปได้ยินข่าวคราวเกี่ยวกับหมอดูแม่น ๆ คนใหม่ที่โลกทั้งใบต้องตื่นตะลึงในความถูกต้องแม่นยำของเขา  ผมจึงต้องตาลีตาเหลือกไปจ้างหมอดูท่านนี้มาเป็นที่ปรึกษาเป็นการด่วน ทั้งนี้เพื่อให้แน่ใจว่าตัวเลขประมาณการด้านเศรษฐกิจที่ธนาคารโลกจะนำออกเผยแพร่แก่สาธารณชนในเดือนมิถุนายนนั้นใกล้เคียงกับความเป็นจริงที่สุด ไม่อย่างนั้นเสียชื่อนักเศรษฐศาสตร์ฟันธงหมด

Paul the Octopus' forecast on the Thai economy: Swimming with one tentacle

Frederico Gil Sander's picture

Image courtesy of Caitfoto through a Creative Commons license
(Available in: ภาษาไทย)

Following the very successful earlier engagements of a Khmer palm reader and a celebrity turtle-shell fortune teller, the Thailand economic team has recently hired the forecasting star of the moment to divine the future of the economy. I am not talking about Professor Nouriel “Dr. Doom” Roubini, but Octopus Paul, who had to escape Germany in a hurry to avoid becoming “pulpo a la Gallega”. For a hefty fee of a five shrimps, the wise cephalopod spent a few hours in our offices sharing his prognosis for the Thai economy.

Connecting Sri Lankans to Prosperity

Eliana Cardoso's picture

The presidential election in Sri Lanka this January resulted in an easy win for the incumbent Mahinda Rajapakse. The end of the long lasting civil conflict with Tamil separatists, strong remittances and an IMF agreement boosted investors’ confidence. Foreign exchange reserves recovered from about one month of imports in the first half of 2009 to six months of imports by January 2010.

Now that the war is over and the global economy recovering, the government needs to grasp the opportunity to do the right things and avoid hurting confidence in the country’s stability, which is key to the rise in foreign investment and tourism.

The bad news is that the withdrawal of GSP Plus by the European Union countries can hurt industrial exports. The EU decision is worrisome. Thanks to the increase in manufacture exports from 6 percent of total exports in 1975 to 60 percent in 2005, firms began to lead Sri Lanka‘s connectivity with the rest of the world.

Security and Development

Dilip Ratha's picture

Wish you a new year of happiness and prosperity.

Recent events have once again confirmed that security threats will remain a recurring theme in this new decade as in the past decade. To me, security and development seems more of a global public good issue than, say, conflict and development, and has more practical implications in the immediate term than, say, climate change and development. Yet I have not read much on the global development implications of the new security regimes. There is a bit of literature on conflict, but not much on the global development implications of the current security concerns.

Tighter security post-911 has made international travel and trade more cumbersome, costly and time consuming than before. Efforts to track the terrorists by tracking the flow of financing has greatly increased the need for new financial laws and documentation to open a bank account, get a car loan, or simply send money. All countries have increased the scrutiny of foreigners’ legal status and intentions. To what extent such tighter measures have impacted different aspects of globalization – for example, aid, trade, investments, tourism, study abroad, sports, the flow of information and the sharing of technology?

Cambodia's economy in 2010: After unusual year, is recovery on its way for workers and entrepreneurs?

Stéphane Guimbert's picture

When I was asked to look back at Cambodia's economy in 2009 and ahead to 2010, I began to wish I had some magic tools such as this ox (although in that case, the ox was not that magical, since the 2009 harvest turned out to be quite good).

Indonesia: Here be (Komodo) dragons

Tony Whitten's picture

I thought that seeing zoo animals would have prepared me for seeing these unfettered beasts at close quarters, but I was completely wrong. They are HUGE.

I’d seen the video, read the book, heard the David Attenborough podcast, written the box, gone to the zoos, got the T-shirt. So I thought I knew Komodo Dragons pretty well, even if I hadn’t seen them in the wild.  I’d seen many other types of monitor lizards in forests and along rivers all over Asia and Australia, and didn’t think that seeing a larger one would be an especially great way to use up a precious day of vacation.

So when we landed in Flores in the dry Lesser Sunda islands of southern Indonesia, we were in two minds whether to bother to go to Komodo National Park which for nearly 20 years has been a World Heritage Site. There are certainly other things to do in western Flores such as trekking the Mbeliling forests, visiting the remarkable highland village of Waerebo, snorkelling/diving, and vegging out in some interesting hotels such as the EcoLodge.  Eventually, on the grounds that it would be faintly ridiculous to be so close to such a famous site and not to take a day to go, we rented a boat for the two-hour trip to the park’s Tourist Zone. (Mind you, I believe I’m one of the very few people ever to have gone to Agra and not seen the Taj Mahal.)

Comparing the fuel efficiency of planes, trains, automobiles – and cheeseburgers?

James I Davison's picture

After East Asia & Pacific on the rise blogger and World Bank conservationist Tony Whitten recently questioned the morality of jetting off to Asia so often for work, this chart from GOOD Magazine – comparing (sort of) the efficiency of different modes of transportation – caught my eye.

Since the people who made the chart are considering gallons of fuel used per passenger to travel a long distance, Tony’s frequently used airplanes are far from being the worst offenders on the list, which is led by gas-guzzling SUVs and cruise ships. When it comes to realistically traveling 350 miles, your most efficient choices – in the following order, according to this chart – are to travel by bus, train, or (you guessed it) airplane.

If that doesn't cut it for you, however, and you are feeling particularly energetic, they made a conversion to human energy. In such a case, GOOD estimates, a person would have to consume approximately 16 Whoppers to complete the trip by bike and 48 of the mouth-watering cheeseburgers to trek the distance on foot (To be safe, I'll take a similar stance as GOOD in "neither endorsing or denouncing the consumption of Whoppers").

As an aside, I would have liked to figure out how many of the burgers it would take to fuel the number of air miles logged by World Bank Group's Washington, DC, staff (as Tony discovered, it equals at least 400 million miles each year) – were they to travel by foot. But seeing as my math skills were never too great, maybe one of you, dear readers, can help me figure out their equation?

(hat tip to FlowingData)


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