The Punjab Model Of Agricultural Development Has Evoked A Keen Interest And Curiosity On A Wide Scale. Some Researchers Observe That The Benefits Of The Agricultural Development Have Not Reached The Weaker Sections In The Rural Areas Of The Punjab. In This Backdrop, The Objective Of The Present Study Is To Examine The Dynamics Of Rural Poverty Prevailing Among Agricultural Labourers, Marginal Farmers And Small Farmers. It Elaborately Examines The Sources, Composition And Patterns Of Income And Consumption; And Magnitude And Determinants Of Indebtedness Of Agricultural Labourers, Marginal Farmers And Small Farmers In Differentially Developed Regions Of The Punjab.The Painstaking Study Yielded That Agricultural Labourers Are Enjoying A High Level Of Living Vis-À-Vis Marginal Farmers. The Proposition Of Persons Below The Poverty Line Has Been Found To Be The Highest In The Case Of Marginal Farmers And This Proportion Was The Highest In The Least Developed Region. In General, It Appears That The Extent Of Poverty Is Inversely Related To The Productivity Levels Of The Regions But The Magnitude Of Indebtedness Is Directly Related To The Productivity Levels Of The Different Regions Of Punjab.The Book Will Be Of Immense Value To The Students And Research Scholars Of Economics And Sociology Besides The Academics And Policy Planners In The Field. And It Will Enrich The Valuable Collection Of Every Library.

This book discusses critical policy issues that need to be addressed if India wishes to achieve the SDG 1 based elusive goal of ending poverty in the country. In its nine chapters, it takes the readers through trends and estimates of poverty in India, explains changes in the way it has been measured over time and the factors that lead to persistence of poverty, draws attention to the fact that hunger is both a cause and an effect of poverty and has gender and age dimensions too. The book revisits strategies that were successful in addressing poverty emanating from situations of conflict, presents a discussion on migration as a critical coping mechanism among poor, analyses the links between ill health and poverty as well as education and poverty to draw attention to the policy imperatives that need attention. India’s report card on poverty remains dismal even though there is recognition of the importance of reducing or eliminating or ending it at both national and global levels. Despite rapid economic growth and improvement on a range of development indicators, an unacceptably high proportion of India’s population continues to suffer poverty in multiple dimensions. SDG 1 or “ending poverty in all its forms everywhere” cannot be achieved unless policies and poverty alleviation programmes understand and address chronic poverty and its dynamics. This requires that we estimate and understand the extent of poverty, the factors that lead to people getting stuck in it and the ways this can be addressed. It also requires understanding the dynamic nature of poverty or the fact that many of those who are poor are able to move out of poverty as well as the fact that many others who are not poor become impoverished. These are the issues that are comprehensively examined and addressed in this book. In addition to students, teachers and researchers in the areas of development, economic growth, equity and welfare, the book is also of great interest to policy makers, planners and non‐government agencies who are concerned with understanding and addressing poverty-related issues in the developing countries.

The UN Declaration on Human Rights has been fifty years old. A moment is needed to take stock and to look at the deficits which still exist in terms of human rights half a century later. The declaration of 1948 contains a comprehensive list of political, economic, social and cultural rights and aims at the protection of the freedom, equality, and human dignity of all human beings, irrespective of their race, gender, language or religion. Never before in history had there been such a far-reaching and solemn undertaking to protect each and every individual from all forms of oppression and deprivation. Two treaties adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966 translate the ideas of the Human Rights Declaration into binding international law, and a High Commissioner for Human Rights, an office created as a result of the UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993, has been put in charge of monitoring the human rights situation and coordinate UN action on it. Numerous human rights NGOs all over the world, most important among them Amnesty International, have established themselves as additional watchdogs to guard against human rights violations.

Establishes relationship between poverty and unemployment and between social structure and poverty in the rural areas of Central India. Deals with both theoretical and empirical aspects of poverty and unemployment. The problems inherent in conceptualization as well as various theories and ideologies of poverty and unemployment, have been discussed in detail.

Non-governmental organisations have become the new hope of development cooperation. Criticism of official and multi-lateral development assistance in mounting. After more than for decades of international cooperation, there is more poverty in the Third World (with the exception of a few countries) than ever before. It has become clear that existing instruments cannot bring about change. Even the large donor organisations doubt their own ability to solve problems and find their doubts confirmed by internal evaluations. What led to this state of affairs, and is there reason to hope that the NGOs can do a better job?

Although there is much interest in poverty reduction, there are few agreed upon strategies to effectively reduce poverty. In this new book, the editors have gathered together various evidences on poverty dynamics, based on panel data from the last few decades in the Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh and Tamil Nadu in India, compared with more recent data from sub-Saharan Africa. The major finding of this research project is that rural households in sub-Saharan African are beginning to experience the same pattern of structural change in income composition and poverty reduction that Asian households have experienced in the past 20-25 years. The chapters in the book explore how the spread of Green Revolution has triggered the subsequent transformation of rural economies. Many rural households in Asia have been able to move out of poverty in the presence of increasing scarcity of farmland initially by increasing rice income through the adoption of modern rice technology and gradually diversifying their income sources away from farm to non-farm activities. Increased participation in non-farm employment has been more pronounced among the more educated children, whose education is facilitated by an increase in farm income brought about by the Green Revolution. This book identifies the importance of Green Revolution and non-farm employment for poverty reduction in Asia, which provides valuable lessons for sub-Saharan Africa.

With the use of wide-ranging case studies the author clearly illustrates the impact of schemes intended to re-allocate land in developing countries. Concluding that land reform can play a major part in stimulating rural economies this book explores the extent to which such policies can successfully reduce poverty and increase agricultural growth.

Abstract: May 1999 - Access to land is deeply important in rural India, where the incidence of poverty is highly correlated with lack of access to land. The author provides a framework for assessing alternative approaches to improving access to land by India's rural poor. He considers India's record implementing land reform and identifies an approach that includes incremental reforms in public land administration to reduce transaction costs in land markets (thereby facilitating land transfers) and to increase transparency, making information accessible to the public to ensure that socially excluded groups benefit. Reducing constraints on access to land for the rural poor and socially excluded requires five key issues: restrictions on land-lease markets, the fragmentation of holdings, the widespread failure to translate women's legal rights into practice, poor access to (and encroachment on) the commons, and high transaction costs for land transfers. Among guidelines for policy reform the author suggests: Selectively deregulate land-lease (rental) markets, because rental markets may be important in giving the poor access to land; Reduce transaction costs in land markets, including both official costs and informal costs (such as bribes to expedite transactions), partly by improving systems for land registration and management of land records; Critically reassess land administration agencies and find ways to improve incentive structures, to reduce rent-seeking and base promotions on performance; Promote women's independent land rights through policy measures to increase women's bargaining power within the household and in society generally; Improve transparency of land administration and public access to information, to reduce rent-seeking by land administration officers and to strengthen poor people's land rights (and knowledge thereof); Strengthen institutions in civil society to provide the awareness, monitoring, and pressure needed for successful reform and to provide checks and balances on inappropriate uses of state power; In a companion paper (WPS 2124) the author addresses these issues at the level of a particular state - Orissa, one of India ' s poorest states - in an empirical study, from a transaction costs perspective, of social exclusion and land administration. This paper - a product of the Rural Development Sector Unit, South Asia Region - is part of a larger effort in the region to promote access to land and to foster more demand-driven and socially inclusive institutions in rural development.