Abhijit V Banerjee and Esther Duflo have brought a rare microeconomic focus to development economics. Steering clear of a yellow brick road out of poverty, they tell us why we should take the poor seriously, writes Niranjan Rajadhyaksha in Mint Lounge

A chance encounter between a hungry economist and a woman selling dosas on a street would not be worthy of mention—unless the economist happens to be Abhijit V. Banerjee.

The two met in one of the poor neighbourhoods of Guntur, a small town in Andhra Pradesh. At around 9 one morning, the 49-year-old economics professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was tempted to buy a dosa for breakfast. The street was lined with women selling fresh dosas. Banerjee and a local colleague walked up to a woman in a cream-coloured sari, who seemed to be less busy than the others…

Read the full article in Mint Lounge.

By Aditi Seshadri

India is the fourth most dangerous country in the world for women, after Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan, according to a survey published last week, primarily because of its skewed sex ratio and human trafficking.

Conducted by Trustlaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation, the poll asked 213 gender experts from five continents to rank countries based on their overall perception of danger as well as six categories of risks — health, sexual violence, nonsexual violence, harmful practices rooted in culture, tradition or religion, lack of access to economic resources and human trafficking. The poll covered not just “hidden dangers” such as lack of education opportunities and healthcare but also rape and murder.

Poor healthcare, nonsexual violence and poverty made Afghanistan the most dangerous country for women, while the Democratic Republic of Congo — named ‘the rape capital of the world by the United Nations’ — was ranked second because of staggering levels of sexual violence. Neighbour Pakistan ranked third because of its cultural, tribal and religious practices that are detrimental to women (including acid attacks, child and forced marriage and punishment or retribution by stoning), while Somalia ranked fifth due to its high maternal mortality, rape, female genital mutilation and child marriage.

Female foeticide, infanticide and human trafficking are the main reasons why India figures on the list. The survey says nearly 12 million girls were aborted in the last three decades, and an estimated 50 million girls are thought to be missing over the past century due to female infanticide and foeticide.

Here is the irony: We have a female President and Lok Sabha Speaker, four women chief ministers, a woman who heads the ruling coalition and a female Opposition leader in the Lok Sabha, yet there are women deprived of their basic right to be born.

Clearly India’s economic progress hasn’t reflected in an improved status for the girl child — the 2011 Census found the sex ratio for South Mumbai (home to many of Mumbai’s richest residents) to have dropped to 874 girls for every 1,000 boys, from 922 as per the 2001 Census. (Read about it here).

And then there’s the issue of trafficking. In 2009, the CBI estimated that 90 per cent of trafficking took place within India and there were around 3 million prostitutes, 40 per cent of them minors. “The practice is common but lucrative so it goes untouched by government and police”, said Cristi Hegranes of the Global Press institute.

The report also said that, according to a US State Department report on trafficking in 2010, in addition to sex slavery, other forms of trafficking include forced labour and forced marriage. The report also found slow progress in criminal prosecutions of traffickers.

All of this begs the question, how come we don’t see marches and fasts to protest the plight of our women?

More facts from the survey:

1. AFGHANISTAN

Beleaguered by insurgency, corruption and dire poverty, Afghanistan ranked as most dangerous to women overall and came out worst in three of the poll’s key risk categories: health, non-sexual violence and economic discrimination.

• Women in Afghanistan have a one in 11 chance of dying in childbirth.
• Some 87 pct of women are illiterate.
• 70-80 pct of girls and women face forced marriages.

2. CONGO

Still reeling from a 1998-2003 war and accompanying humanitarian disaster that killed 5.4 million, Democratic Republic of Congo ranked second due mainly to staggering levels of sexual violence.

• About 1,150 women are raped every day, or some 420,000 a year, according to a recent report in the American Journal of Public Health.
• The Congolese Women’s Campaign Against Sexual Violence puts the number of rapes at 40 women a day.
• 57 pct of pregnant women are anaemic.

3. PAKISTAN

Those polled cited cultural, tribal and religious practices harmful to women, including acid attacks, child and forced marriage and punishment or retribution by stoning or other physical abuse.

• More than 1,000 women and girls are victims of honour killings every year, according to Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission.
• 90 pct of women in Pakistan face domestic violence.

4. INDIA

Female foeticide, child marriage and high levels of trafficking and domestic servitude make the world’s largest democracy the fourth most dangerous place for women, the poll showed.

• 100 million people, mostly women and girls, are involved in trafficking in one way or another, according to former Indian Home Secretay Madhukar Gupta.
• Up to 50 million girls are missing over the past century due to female infanticide and foeticide.
• 44.5 pct of girls are married before the age of 18.

5. SOMALIA

One of the poorest, most violent and lawless countries, Somalia ranked fifth due to a catalogue of dangers including high maternal mortality, rape, female genital mutilation (FGM) and child marriage.

• 95 pct of women face FGM, mostly between the ages of 4 and 11.
• Only 9 pct of women give birth at a health facility.
• Only 7.5 pct of parliament seats are held by women.

Aditi Seshadri is Head of Communications at Mumbai Smiles NGO and Editor, Mumbai Action.

The views expressed here are the author’s  own and do not necessarily reflect that of any person or organisation.

Demands for a more western diet in some emerging countries could have a more detrimental effect on global health and hunger than population growth, writes Richard King in The Guardian.

Why will nearly one in seven people go to bed hungry tonight? After all, the world currently produces enough food for everyone. Today’s major problems in the food system are not fundamentally about supply keeping up with demand, but more about how food gets from fields and on to forks.

Hunger – along with obesity, obscene waste and appalling environmental degradation – is an outcome of our broken food system. And the challenge of producing enough food to meet demand looks set to increase. With the world’s population expected to grow from around 7 billion today to more than 9 billion in 2050 – an increase of nearly one-third – there will certainly be a lot more stomachs to fill. The UN has forecast that, on current trends, demand may increase by 70% over the same period, and that’s without even tackling current levels of hunger.

Read the full article in The Guardian.

By Aditi Seshadri

Earlier this month, international child rights NGO Save the Children released its annual Mothers’ Index, ranking 164 countries on the basis of how mothers fare. Unsurprisingly, Norway topped the list as the best place to be a mother (Scandivanian countries have a way of sneakily topping all ‘quality of life’ lists, must be the weather), while, even less surprisingly, Afghanistan ranked last, making it the toughest country in the world to be a mother.

Where was India?

India, a secular, politically stable democracy with one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, is ranked 75 out of 79 ‘less developed’ countries. The survey divided countries into more developed, less developed and least developed ones and drew up separate lists, (which means India didn’t make it to the first cut), on the basis of indicators of health, education and economic status of mothers and children.

That’s 57 spots behind China (our proclaimed economic competitor), 18 behind Algeria (which emerged from a 19-year emergency rule only this year), 9 behind Occupied Palestinian Territory (a region of uncertain legal status) and one behind Congo (yet to see a fully fair and democratic election).

Now, Indians are used to ranking way behind European countries when it comes to indices like these. So, it doesn’t shock us to know that in Norway, the life expectancy of baby girls at birth is 83 years, or that girls get an estimated 18 years of formal schooling or that women hold 40% of the seats in the government, while in India, female life expectancy at birth is 66 years, girls get an estimated 10 years of formal schooling and only 11% of government seats are held by women. That we expect.

But what about the countries that we think we’re better than, or at least as good as. Like China, a country with a bigger population than ours but where 99% of child births are attended to by skilled personnel; in India, only 53% of child births are attended by professionals. Or Algeria, where 4% of children under the age of five years are underweight, compared with India’s 48%. Or even Congo, where the ratio of female to male earned income is 0.51 compared with India’s ratio of 0.32.

Why are these numbers important?

Because research tells us: Educate a woman, educate a household. Keep a mother healthy, keep a child healthy.

There continues to be very little intervention at the rural level to ensure basic healthcare training and support, which could save thousands of lives. Besides, in a patriarchal society like ours, women’s health is nobody’s priority. In many Indian families, should a baby girl manage to live (according to the 2011 Census, India’s sex ratio has now dropped to 940), she will eat last, drop out of school first, marry young, have no say in how many children she should have, and die trying.

These numbers are an indictment, an accusation, mothers are all fine to be venerated in religious texts and Bollywood movies, but when it comes to action on the ground, India is still nowhere like the progressive country it desperately wants to be.

Aditi Seshadri is Head of Communications at Mumbai Smiles NGO and Editor, Mumbai Action.

The views expressed here are the author’s  own and do not necessarily reflect that of any person or organisation.

India needs to redistribute its phenomenal economic growth towards its impoverished citizens, and a draft food security bill is a step in the right direction, writes Swati Narayan in The Guardian.

More than a quarter of the world’s hungry live in India. This emerging superpower grows enough to feed itself, but has not yet been able to wipe out mass hunger. More than 400 million women, men and children go to bed hungry every night.

Clearly, the country needs to redistribute its phenomenal economic growth towards its impoverished citizens. But, so far this has not been easy. Despite a network of half a million fair-price shops, foodgrains routinely rot in state granaries. After decades of land reforms, 41% of the rural population are effectively landless. And the world’s largest network of state-run nurseries has not been able to make any dent in child malnutrition.

Read the full article in The Guardian.

The child sex ratio continues to follow the worsening trend established over four decades ago. Demographers predict that India’s population will remain overly masculine for decades. Kannan Kasturi reports in India Together.

India’s population, revealed by the 2011 census, presents a contrasting picture. For every 1000 males, there are only 940 females. India compares unfavorably even with its neighbours – Bangladesh (978), Pakistan (943) and Sri Lanka (1034). China (926) is the major exception having a worse sex ratio than India.

This, however, is not the worst of the news in the new census. The child sex ratio – the number of females to every 1000 males in the age group 0-6 years – at 914, is sharply lower than the sex ratio in the overall population. What is most shocking is that the child sex ratio continues to follow the worsening trend established over four decades ago. Based on these trends, demographers predict that India’s population will remain overly masculine through the second half of the 21st century.

Read the full article in India Together.

In a city of vast homelessness, can economic growth in the services sector alone lift millions out of poverty? Mumbai’s new vision of the future pitches for reclamation and densification, but not jobs and livelihood, writes Darryl D’Monte in India Together.

It is quite appropriate for every major megacity – with a population over 10 million – to develop a vision of what the city will look like in 10, 25 or even 40 or 50 years. Unless one knows the ultimate destination, city authorities will not be able to decide which alternate paths to take. London, Paris and Singapore all have such plans.

And now, so does Mumbai. A 40-year-plan for the city prepared by a team of Singapore consultants known as Surbana, was unveiled at the State Guest House under the auspices of Mumbai First, a corporate think tank, on 4 March. Many of the dimensions of this plan are relevant to the other metros in this country as well.

Read full story in India Together.

On the 28^th of July 2010, the General Assembly of the United Nations, recognized access to clean water and sanitation as a human right, with a recorded vote of 121 nations voting for the resolution, with none voting against, along with 41 abstentions.

India voted for water as a human right.

Meanwhile in Mumbai, as per the Maharashtra government and BMC rules, there is no need to supply clean water to slums that have been built after January 1, 1995. And where the government refuses to take responsibility for its own people, a private mafia has filled its shoes with a profit-motive that ensures that the U.N resolution is nothing but a faraway fantasy for millions of people.

This has left people in slum communities across Mumbai to spend hours walking kilometers to fill 35 litre drums with water, that may or may not be clean, for Rs.5 or Rs.30, depending on availability or source. Families that can barely make ends meet, have to pay exorbitant prices due to shortages of water, and women and children lose out on work and school, as sometimes water is only available between 12pm and 4pm.

Read the full story by Javed Iqbal here.

In my lifetime, our houses must have been torn down seven to eight times,” says Pakanniamma Periyarsamy, 50. She is just one of the countless migrants who came to  Mumbai looking for a better life and made it their home over the years. She lives in Sanjay Gandhi Nagar, a slum bordering Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport. Pakanniamma migrated to the city in 1970 from Vallampadi village in Salem, Tamil Nadu. She sells flowers on the streets of Mumbai.

The colony was called Sanjay Gandhi Nagar by residents who hoped that the name would save it from demolition. For the same reason, neighbouring areas are called Rajendra Prasad Nagar, Shastri Nagar and Ambedkar Nagar. Yet the demolitions are part and parcel of living in a city where they can have no legal rights to land, coupled with an unending hunger for real estate by builders and corporations.

Read the full story by Javed Iqbal in The New Indian Express