Community-managed rice banks: lessons from Laos

Rice banks are increasingly used in South-East Asia as a means of addressing seasonal food crises facing poor communities. Despite general agreement about the effectiveness of community-managed rice banks in improving food security, there has been almost no research into their effectiveness in reaching the poorest, or the prospects of sustainability linked to regular repayments of rice. Concern Laos sought to answer these questions through community mobilisation, forming rules and regulations to encourage the participation of the poorest, developing simple tools and procedures in line with existing community capacity, and building greater community capacity. Other challenges remain, such as changing the prevailing ‘relief’ mentality, ensuring women's participation, and establishing regular savings schemes, in order to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of the rice banks.     

From Development to Empowerment: The Self-Employed Women's Association in India

Since the 1970s, development experts have increasingly focused on how development policies and strategies affect women in developing countries. In recent years, the emphasis has included empowerment, which increases women's decision-making capability and well-being. This essay is an account of the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in India, a trade union for self-employed women since 1972. It analyzes the strategies that SEWA has used to mobilize and empower self-employed women in India, using materials and data collected on a field visit in 1998.     

Seasonality,differential access and interlinking of labour and credit

This article explains the interlinking of rural labour and credit transactions in terms of differential access to credit markets and seasonality. A model is developed which incorporates not only seasonality and differential access but also several other explanations for interlinking suggested in the literature. Moreover, it allows one to test the sensitivity of the results to differing powers on the part of landowners relative to working households.     

Local Government Responses to Fiscal Stress: Evidence from the Public Education Sector

This article investigates local government responses to fiscal stress through the lens of the K–12 public education sector, examining two major policy options available to school districts for managing fiscal hardship: (1) cutting costs, especially through layoffs, and (2) raising revenues locally through voter referenda. The article employs district‐level administrative and survey data from California and Indiana to examine whether school districts exhibit features of a rational or natural system—in which their behaviors largely reflect fiscal pressures only—or whether they exhibit features of an open system in which nonfinancial factors also shape responses. In Indiana, district fiscal characteristics explain differences in cost‐cutting and revenue‐raising behaviors; there is little empirical evidence that school districts exhibit features of an open system. In California, both fiscal and environmental attributes, including poverty characteristics, average student achievement levels, and the enrollment of English learner students, explain school district behaviors.     

Aspects of Inclusion and Peoples’ Empowerment Related to National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, launched in the year 2006, is dubbed as one of the major flagship strategies of the Government of India, in coherence with the objective of removing poverty and unemployment. While scope of employment in rural asset creation protects environment, the earning opportunities address the issue of financial and social inclusion. Principal Component Analysis has been applied to calculate Financial, Social, Environmental, and finally Overall Inclusion Index as well as Empowerment Index. The results reveal significant association between Overall Inclusion and Empowerment index. Using multiple regression, Overall Inclusion is explained by certain significant variables.     

Rethinking central planning: A federal critique of the Planning Commission

ABSTRACT

This article critically assesses the impact of the Planning Commission on center-state relations in India. It argues that the Planning Commission had a centralizing effect due to its role in overseeing five year and annual planning, its contribution to designing and overseeing Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS), and its involvement in discretionary grant-making. Central policy priorities and inter-state disagreements prevented the Planning Commission from acquiring the role of a shared rule institution, capable of offsetting the centralizing implications of the aforementioned policies. The article then speculates on what prompted the recent replacement of the Planning Commission with the NITI Aayog and what this may mean for shared rule and the nature of collaborative federalism in India more in general.     

State Agencies’ Use of Administrative Data for Improved Practice: Needs,Challenges, and Opportunities

Growing interest in the use of administrative data to answer questions around program implementation and effectiveness has led to greater discussion of how government agencies can develop the necessary internal data infrastructure, analytic capacity, and office culture. However, there is a need for more systematic research into how states find different pathways and strategies to build administrative data capacity. Drawing on interviews with almost 100 human service agency staff and their data partners, the authors examine the realities of administrative data use. They summarize the experiences of data users in order to address two main challenges: limited analytic capacity and challenges to linking or sharing data resources. The article concludes by examining a range of approaches that government agencies take to improve data quality and capacity to analyze that data.