Inspired by the worldwide debate on the issue, the present paper is a humble attempt to test the nexus between poverty and environmental degradation in rural India based on secondary sources of data. Though the study does not reveal any definite pattern of linkage in the context of rural India it examines the probable causes of failure in the link, highlights the status of poverty and environme...

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) continue to be the global ‘flavour of the month’ in international development. They are regarded as “outside” actors perceived to work in the interests of the poor, and in the absence of the state, many NGOs have taken on vital role in the provision of basic services to the poor. The institutional and political environment is attuned to privatisation in wha...

This paper evaluates the impact of access to groundwater on poverty using data from rural India. The estimation exploits the fact that the technology required to access groundwater changes exogenously due to constraints imposed by laws of physics at a depth of eight meters. I find that rural poverty in areas where depth from surface is below the cutoff is 9 to10 percent higher. Using survey dat...

The micro-credit programmes focus on organisation of the rural poor at the grassroots level through a process of social mobilization. It enables the poor build their own organisations (SHGs) consisting of 10-20 persons, in which they participate fully and directly and take decisions on all issues concerning poverty eradication. Micro-finance can be a powerful tool in initiating a cyclical proce...

Microfinance is a type of banking service that is provided to unemployed or low-income individuals or groups who would otherwise have no other means of gaining financial services. Micro finance through Self Help Group (SHG) has been recognized internationally as the modern tool to combat poverty and for rural development. Micro finance and SHGs are effective in reducing poverty, empowering wome...

Demographic transition due to population aging is an emerging issue throughout the developing world, and especially in China, which has undergone demographic transition more rapidly than most industrial economies. This paper quantifies the distributional effects in the context of demographic transition using the integrated recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with top-do...