This report examines the precise nature of the required institutional reforms and provides a framework for their design and implementation. We hope that it will help launch a dialogue among ...policy?makers, civil society, and the academic community in LAC on how best to design and reform institutions—that is, on how to supply institutional reforms to meet new societal demands.
Rapid changes have taken place in the structure of the global economy, and this book looks at how South Asia can take advantage of these changes. The author argues that the developing global economy ...will be more complex than originally thought, that instead of a bipolar model with two countries, the US and China, at the centre, it will be multipolar with eight centres of economic activity, including India.
The book goes on to suggest that in the context of such a model, there should be regional cooperation between India and its immediate neighbouring countries for South Asia to advance as an economic region. It argues that South Asia will need to look at its history, and that changes in attitudes, particularly in India and Pakistan, are necessary. The possible benefits to the region, in terms of increases in the rates of economic growth if the regional approach is adopted, are discussed. The book presents a useful contribution to studies in South Asia, as well as Asian Economics.
The principal concern of this paper is to examine the
feasibility of using Public Works Programmes (PWPs) as a strategy for
solving the problem of under-utilisation of labour in the urban sector.
A ...number of hypotheses are implicit in this analysis and it would be
appropriate to list them here. First, despite fairly large investment in
family planning programmes, we do not expect any reduction in the rate
of growth of population in most countries of the developing world in the
foreseeable future; at any rate, not in the next two to three decades.
Second, we do not expect any major structural changes in their
economies—changes that would permit the solution of the problem by
shifting the surplus labour from the rural to the urban sector. This
implies that efforts to solve the problem would have to be made
primarily in the rural areas. Third, recent developments in agricultural
technology notwithstanding, it does not seem possible that the problem
can be solved simply by reordering production relation¬ships in the
rural areas. Some investment in short term employment generating
programmes seems necessary. Fourth, even when new production
relationships in agriculture are supplemented with public works
programmes, the problem of enemployment cannot be solved. This is
because of the spill-over of the unem¬ployed from the rural to the urban
areas. Fifth, the urban sector is even less ready to tackle the problem
of unemployment than the rural sector. In this sector, reordering of
production relationships to accommodate more fully the relatively more
abundant factor (labour) is considerably more difficult. There¬fore,
there is some need for investment in Urban Public Works Programmes
(UPWPs). Finally, while it is feasible to use PWPs in the urban sector
for solving the problem of unemployment, their effectiveness is limited
to a few areas and they can provide benefit to only a few socio-economic
groups.
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