More than two decades since India was forced to liberalize its economy, the country has undergone radical transformation – from a planned, centralized economy, to one that seeks to harness market forces and technological change.Today, India is at a crossroads – even as political discourse has undergone churn, there is a distinct lack of conceptual clarity and well-defined economic policymaking. As a result, there is little that separates the economic and foreign policies of success...

The Dazzle of the Digital is written in the context of digital technology’s inextricable link with progress and modernity in India, with the COVID pandemic in the backdrop. Digital technology such as smartphones and the internet exemplify the popular ideal of a modernity where the proliferation of data and information seamlessly translates into knowledge and value. The authors attempt to wrestle with this impulsive conflation of the digital with the modern, and argue that the form...

Small and medium enterprises (SME) have attracted increasing interest in the last few years, and industrialization is no longer seen as a linear way of development. This book analyzes how SME clusters emerge in a developing economy. Using India as a case study, it addresses one central question: If growth has largely failed to be inclusive so far, and if employing a work force in increasing returns activities through a different trajectory of industrialization is largely dependent upon ind...

A lot has changed in Indian social and economic planning since the introduction of the grand rural employment guarantee scheme, now known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act (MGNREGA). The act has been implemented, suffered setbacks, established land-marks, drawn criticism, and collected accolades in all these years. But most significantly it has profoundly changed the character of the Indian women at large. Whether these changes are good for Indian democracy is a matter of...

Thought leaders from twenty diverse fields, ranging from politics, economics and foreign policy to health care and energy, predict what 2030 will look like for India and how the nation will evolve in this decade.Editor Gautam Chikermane has masterfully weaved together essays by Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, Ajay Shah, Amish Tripathi, Amrita Narlikar, Bibek Debroy, David Frawley, Devdip Ganguli, Justice B.N. Srikrishna, Kirit S. Parikh, Manish Sabharwal, Monika Halan, Parth J. Shah, Raghunath...

This book is a clarion call to every Indian citizen and the world at large, looking at India with a keen eye as it gallops on the path of inclusive growth, aimed at unleashing the unlimited potential of a billion young minds.For the last 8 years, India has been in fast gear, roaring, leading, learning, giving, sharing, winning, digitizing, inventing, and developing its infrastructure along with other sectors such as energy, production, exports, and finance.There has been a gr...

Women in Nepal have long experienced poverty, social exclusion, and marginalization because of their gender, especially among ethnic minorities and low-caste groups. Between 2002 and 2013, the Asian Development Bank and the Government of Nepal developed and implemented the Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women Project to reduce poverty by empowering rural women and members of other disadvantaged groups through an integrated process of economic, social, legal, and political empowerment. ...

The Indian Constitution is the largest written constitution that guarantees equality to women and empowers the State to take affirmative actions in favour of women. India has adopted International conventions for protection of rights of women and granting them equality and ratified the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in the year 1993. The National Policy for Women Empowerment was presented in 2001, the goal of that policy to bring about the ad...

Higher education, and in particular technical education, is critical to India's aspirations of becoming a major competitive player in the global knowledge economy. The technical education system is huge and complex, and reforms are imperative. Countrywide policies continue to identify Good Governance as key to the success of reforms and investments in higher education.A Learning Forum brought together senior policymakers, leaders and experts from: five States leading in technical education (A...

Indias Silicon Plateau is a study of the development in India of information and communication technology (ICT). The author has emphasised the political, historical and institutional factors, acknowledging the role of the central and state governments. India's policy of import substitution and its science and technology infrastructure, bringing together universities, industry and government provided a solid foundation for growth.The author believes that India's ICT revolution predates the 199...

This book presents a set of analytical and deeply policy-oriented articles on the dynamics of growth and performance of micro and small enterprises in India during the period of reforms. It provides fairly detailed analyses of policy changes for the micro and small enterprises secotr as well as empirical analyses of performance and efficiency of the unorganised manufacturing sector. it examines a range of emerging and persistent complex issues facing this crucial sector including credit, e...

The collection of papers brings out the complexities in PPP in terms of types, conceptualization, structure, institutions, and financing. It covers a broad sweep ranging from infrastructure to services and utilities; and from global to Indian states. The methodology is primarily empirical but the thrust is on conceptualization of PPP in its various forms and frameworks. PPP is still a practitioner’s field but is growing in size and significance; and as a solution to failures of public syst...