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In this paper, a model for development of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) has been presented in perspective of India to ensure the Economic and Social development of the country and addressing, simultaneously, some of the major challenges being faced by India. Adequate microfinancing to the SHGs and developing entrepreneurship among its members may help in achieving several targets like poverty alleviation, women empowerment, employment generation, homogeneous development etc. If planned properly, the SHGs can become an instrument for all round and all-inclusive development of India or any other similarly placed developing country. SHGs may also play an import role in the endeavour of India to become a five trillion economy, to achieve self-sustainability and to attain the Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This detailed case study of India's "outsourcing" industry illustrates the challenges in linking macro and micro human resource policies with an economic development strategy based on export-oriented services. The rapid expansion in the outsourcing of services to India has raised the possibility that this sector will be a key engine of India's economic growth. Based on extensive field research carried out over a four-year period, the authors of this study argue that four interrelated human resource policy challenges threaten the outsourcing industry's growth: two "macro" problems (current skill shortages and the inability of the country to produce higher levels of skills for the long-term growth and sustainability of the industry), and two micro problems (very high levels of employee turnover and rapidly increasing employee costs). The authors evaluate current policy responses and suggest options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inherited caste identity is an important determinant of life opportunity for a fifth of the world’s population, but is not given the same significance in global development policy debates as gender, race, age, religion or other identity characteristics. This review asks why addressing caste-based inequality and discrimination does not feature in intergovernmental commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and whether it should. Taking India as its focus, it finds that caste has been treated as an archaic system and source of historical disadvantage due compensation through affirmative action in ways that overlook its continuing importance as a structure of advantage and of discrimination in the modern economy, especially post-liberalization from the 1990s. A body of recent literature from anthropology, economics, history and political science is used to explore the modern life of caste in society, economy and development. Questions are asked about caste as social hierarchy, the role of caste in post-liberalization rural inequality, in urban labor markets and in the business economy, and the effect of policies of affirmative action in public-sector education and employment. Caste is found to be a complex institution, simultaneously weakened and revived by current economic and political forces; it is a contributor to persisting national socioeconomic and human capital disparities, and has major impacts on subjective wellbeing. Caste effects are not locational; they travel from the village to the city and into virtually all markets. Caste persists in the age of the market because of its advantages – its discriminations allow opportunity hoarding for others; and the threat of the advancement of subordinated groups provokes humiliating violence against them. The evidence points to the need for policy innovation to address market and non-market discrimination and to remove barriers, especially in the informal and private sector; and to ensure caste has its proper place in the global development policy debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines family planning during the Emergency in India, drawing upon the archive of the Shah Commission of Inquiry. It aims, primarily, to understand why family planning became such an important point of state intervention during the Emergency, when millions were sterilized. I argue that family planning was intended as a technocratic fix for the problem of poverty and that, although the family planning program existed before the Emergency, it received a fillip through Indira Gandhi's Emergency-era push for poverty eradication thanks to the established position of population control as a prerequisite for economic development. Secondly, it aims to understand how the Emergency and sterilization have become conflated in popular memory, such that the driving forces of poverty eradication and economic development have dropped out of the story altogether. The link between poverty eradication and population control has been forgotten, and a narrative of arbitrary family planning “excess” endured. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the need for inclusive economic development in India, with a focus on the prevalence of human trafficking which targets women, children, and the poor. Topics include the financial pressures faced by Indian children making it necessary for them to work to support their families, the impact of Indian government reforms aimed at liberalizing the economy, increasing private investments, and stimulating economic activity, and the challenges of combating poverty in India posed by corruption, exploitation, and human rights violations.

This article examines the impact that national economic policies adopted during Indira Gandhi's final term in office (1980–84) had on four “national” social groups, namely the big industrialists, the middle class, the rich peasantry, and the poor. The study argues that the Congress (I) chose the former two as its major allies, while the rich peasantry and the poor were relegated to a secondary position. In the process, the focus of India's strategy of development shifted from the agrarian to the industrial sector, and from the rural to the urban world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author's objective is to correct many of the misconceptions about India and to combat mistaken analysis. He highlights the hundreds of millions who live in poverty, the rampant corruption and the incompetence of the administration. He asserts that comparisons with China are always to the disadvantage of India, except in the field of democracy, and suggests that the Indian Space Programme is symptomatic of a wide-spread misallocation of resources. And to suggest that the traffic problems in Delhi and Mumbai are being caused by more motor vehicles is a misdiagnosis. The real cause is an increase in the number of bullock carts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on mean consumption, poverty (all three FGT measures) and inequality during 2004 for rural India using National Sample Survey (NSS) data for the 60th Round. Mean consumption at the national level is much higher than the poverty line. However, the Gini coefficient is higher than in recent earlier rounds. The headcount ratio is 22.9 per cent. Mean consumption, all three measures of poverty and the Gini coefficient are computed at the level of 20 states and 63 agro-climatic zones in these 20 states. It is surmised that despite impressive growth rates deprivation is pervasive, pockets of severe poverty persist, and inequality is rampant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article the authors discuss aspects of political and social developments in India. The article arises from the 2008 trip to India undertaken by the authors in company with several American sociologists. A number of factors in Indian life are examined including the impact on the country of significant economic development, the role that caste plays in Indian society and the status of women in India. The authors' observations of India are contrasted with those recorded in the book "The Vast Majority," by Michael Harrington, published in 1977.

This article presents the author's perspective on changing social and economic mores in India. Traditional concepts on castes and gender roles are slowly dissolving amid the Westernizing influence of economic development. Despite the many positive changes there are still 250 million Indians living below the poverty line.

This paper analyses the dilemma of developing countries in the non-Western world in their struggle to achieve economic and social development. The dilemma results from two opposing pulls that accompany the urge for modernization: the application of new knowledge and technologyfromtheWest and thepreservation of cultural identity, enduring traditional values, and wisdom that have held the society together over the centuries. The analysis is focused on India where the dilemma and the tensions inherent in the transition arequite pronounced. Thedebateover tradition and Westernization isexamined against the background of India'sexposure toWestern ideasthrough its system of higher education. To realizethepotential of management, a shift is proposed fromthepredominantly centralized, bureaucratic model of educational administration to a managerial-professional model that would synthesize Western and indigenous perspectives. Attempts to discover the 'Indianness' of Indian management are reviewed. The concept of leadership is examined in terms of Western theories and compared with the traditional view projected in Indian scriptures. The recent shift in Western management thought is reviewed in terms of its promise for a synthesis with the Eastern perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]