India

Selective abortion of female foetuses has been documented in India as early as the late 1970s when amniocentesis for genetic screening became available (Ramanama and Bambawale, 1980), but it was only with the increasing availability of ultrasound technology in the mid-1980s that the practice became widespread. Most of the existing evidence on sex-selective abortion comes from micro-studies in northern India. These have demonstrated a widespread acceptance of the practice, and several researchers have documented indirect evidence in the form of increasing sex ratios at birth in hospitals or within communities (Booth and others, 1994; Gu and Roy, 1995; Khanna, 1997; Sachar and others, 1990 and 1993; Sahi and Sarin, 1996). While abortion (also called medical termination of pregnancy, or MTP) on broad social and medical grounds has been legal since 1972, sex selection is not. The state of Maharashtra, where the present study was conducted banned prenatal sex selection in 1988; the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Bill made sex detection tests illegal throughout India in 1994.

Although remarkable declines in infant and child mortality have been observed in developing countries during the last quarter of the twentieth century, the incidence and the prevalence of infectious diseases among children under five years of age still persist at an alarmingly high level, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asian countries in the ESCAP region. Over two thirds of the estimated 3.7 million deaths of children in South Asia in the year 2000 were attributable to infections such as pneumonia (acute respiratory infections), diarrhoea and measles (UNICEF, 2004; Black, Morris and Bryce, 2003). In India, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, tuberculosis and chronic hepatitis continue to threaten the lives of millions of children.

This study aims to empirically establish the co-movement of price indices of seemingly unrelated commodities, suggesting that the Central Bank should not decouple fluctuation in the national price index into volatile and core components. An attempt is also made to understand whether monetary policy can influence the factors responsible for price fluctuations in the states of India. The study becomes especially relevant under Indian conditions where flexible inflation targeting has been adopted by the Reserve Bank of India (Central Bank of India) and achieving the targeted inflation is a primary concern of the Indian government. The results of the empirical analysis clearly reveal that unrelated price indices co-move in India, and that monetary policy initiatives fail to influence the common factors of the states of India. The empirical results have crucial implications for the Reserve Bank of India and, as such, a conscious effort is needed to enable policy to influence the price indices of the states of India.

The present study focuses on the Indian flagship financial inclusion scheme – the Self Help Group-Bank Linkage Programme, which successfully leverages the social collateral concept and the vast network of bank branches in India to deliver financial services to small, cohesive and participatory women’s self-help groups. To develop a deeper understanding of the topic of sustainability of self-help groups, we propose a framework that conceptualizes sustainability by integrating the financial and organizational aspects of functioning of self-help groups. Sustainability is assessed in the light of the group’s performance (on set of indicators) with respect to the primary objective of the Self Help Group-Bank Linkage Programme, which is financial intermediation. Subsequently, we ascertain the effect of plausible contributory factors related to group management practices on the sustainability of self-help groups. The results of regression analysis on primary data captured from a survey of 170 self-help groups show that such factors as equitable access to credit, group savings, growth in savings, loan utilization in income generation activities, members depositing a savings contribution or loan installment on each other’s behalf, and distance from bank contribute significantly to group sustainability. Accordingly, designing suitable measures to monitor and improve group governance and management practices would be a critical policy intervention.

This paper provides an overview of some important demographic changes in two major South Asian countries, India and Pakistan, resulting in a situation marked by sustained fertility decline, life prolongation and a growth of population in both the young (especially 25 years and over) and old (60 years and over) age groups. The study postulates that these changes may prove significant for both the countries – affecting, inter alia, the size and clearance mechanism of their labour markets, nature of dependencies, increasing ratios of young to old, etc. The study further postulates that a fair proportion of families in the two countries may find it difficult to endure old-age dependencies owing to increasingly widespread casualization of employment and jobless growth. Enduring old-age dependencies may also be difficult due to limited work opportunities for older persons, functional disabilities, perpetuating poverty, lack of social assistance, compression in real public health expenditure, etc. The study also postulates that the pro-market changes in these countries may not particularly conform to their age structure changes. It may as well create a situation fraught with a significant economic-demographic mismatch (see appendix 1).

Recently, considerable importance is being given to the study of breastfeeding practices in different settings in developing and developed countries. Breast-feeding is important, particularly in developing countries, because of its relationship with child health and birth spacing. It is well documented that mother’s milk is the best food for the newborn child and it has a significant impact on reducing mortality in infants. Apart from these benefits, breast-feeding also plays an equally important role in controlling fertility in developing countries.

In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York, leaders of the world’s Governments signed the Millennium Declaration and committed themselves to a series of goals and targets that came to be known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Goals include reducing under-five mortality by two thirds (Goal 4) and reducing maternal mortality ratio by three quarters (Goal 5) between 1990 and 2015 (IMF, OECD, United Nations and World Bank Group, 2000). According to the assessment made in 2003 by ESCAP, UNDP and ADB, among 47 countries in the ESCAP region for which data are available, one half (24 countries) have already achieved Goal 4 and four additional countries are expected to achieve the Goal, leaving 19 countries (40 per cent) making slow progress or regressing. As for Goal 5 (improve maternal health), of the 42 countries for which data are available, seven have already achieved the Goal and another seven are expected to achieve it, leaving 28 countries (two thirds) either making slow progress or regressing. Goal 5 (reduction by three quarters) is more ambitious than Goal 4 (reduction by two thirds) and it is not surprising that fewer countries are progressing well towards the first than towards the latter. India is classified as progressing slowly towards Goal 4 and regressing in achieving Goal 5 as of 2003 (ESCAP, UNDP and ADB, 2005).

The sharp dip in fertility rates in recent years, combined with falling mortality rates over the last four decades, is leading to an increase in the absolute and relative size of the elderly population in developing countries (Rajan, Sarma and Mishra, 2003). It has been observed that the speed of population ageing is very fast in some countries of South and South-East Asia (Population Reference Bureau, 2006). As a result, issues related to ageing are becoming important in those countries (Liebig and Rajan, 2003).