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Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction Team News - October 2012

25 October 2012

Welcome to the VPR news

Each month, we are hoping to bring you a taste of some of the research work we are conducting, updates from our blog, Povertics, as well as our responses to development issues and access to our publications.

Blog Posts

The technocratisation of poverty analysis and policy
Allister McGregor
One of the biggest sources of failure for international development policy in the 20th century has been the technocratisation of poverty analysis and policy. The reduction of poor men, women and children to sets of numbers to be moved above or below a line allows politicians, policy makers and analysts alike to dehumanise poverty.

So let’s make the technical more political – time for a Sure Start on global child nutrition?
Nick Nisbett
I’ve just returned from an event IDS hosted at the UK’s Labour Party conference in Manchester. At our roundtable, we asked Labour MPs, MEPs, NGOs and the corporate sector how we can put an end to global undernutrition by 2020 and discussed the UK’s role in ensuring that tackling undernutrition remains a global priority.

What if there were 5 clusters of quite different developing countries?
Andy Sumner
Many have challenged the use of income per capita as the primary proxy for development. Of course, in addition to low and middle income countries there are many classifications – notably those by Human Development and the Least Developed Countries classifications and the new pioneering work of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Institute.

Jaideep Gupte
With the world now mostly urban, an old question has resurfaced: Are cities the incontestable and inevitable context in which sustained poverty eradication will occur? For the first time, India reports higher population growth in its urbanised areas than across its vast rural landscape, with its urban population set to reach 600 million by 2031.
 
Clare Gorman
The Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia has long been widely regarded as one of the most effective social protection programmes of its kind. Set up in 2004 by the Government of Ethiopia with the help of the international donor community, the programme’s objective is to reduce chronic food security amongst the poorest.
 
Nick Nisbett
Tuesday 16th October is World Food Day and – given that world food prices are once again making the headlines, it seems timely to be assessing the state of undernutrition in the world. But it’s also depressing to see a topic returning to the media front pages that should never have gone away.

Recent Publications  

This book brings together 20 articles written by pioneers of international development, fascinating for their early challenges to orthodox thinking and bold in suggesting alternatives. Covering five key dimensions, each piece has a new introduction by Sir Richard Jolly indicating its impact on policy over the years and the enduring relevance for the challenges of our times.
 
Journal of International Development
It has become increasingly difficult for young Zambians to construct you-to-adult transitions that meet the normative expectations of coherent life trajectories towads being successful. We explore 60 young Zambians' expereinces through qualitative life history interviews focussing on processes of economic (dis)empowerment.                     
 
The central argument in this paper is that violent urban spaces have a profound impact on how safety and security are understood by the state as well as the urban poor, thereby redefining the parameters of adequate urban living. This paper looks in detail at how the 1992-1993 riots in Mumbai unfolded in groups of inner-city neighbourhoods, and find that specific acts of brutality and violence during the riots continue to shape current understandings of the safe city?

Standing on the Threshold: Food Justice in India
IDS Bulletin Special Issue
India stands on the threshold of potentially the largest step toward food justice the world has ever seen, as the National Food Security Bill works its way through parliament with a view to being passed during its current term period, covering about 70 per cent of households. This special IDS Bulletin, co-constructed with Oxfam India, brings together the views and opinions of some of India's leading practitioner-thinkers to infuse debates such as; how to ensure the marginalised are not excluded from nutrition programmes and that their land and mineral rights are protected?
 

Young People and Agriculture in Africa
IDS Bulletin 43.6
Despite increased commitment to evidence-based policy in African agriculture, the profile of certain 'problems', and the imperative to address them quickly through policy and programmes, becomes separated from evidence and understanding. When this happens, policy advocates, policymakers and development planners rely heavily on 'common knowledge', anecdote and narrative to develop and argue policy alternatives. This is unlikely to result in good policy and development outcomes, particularly when the problems being addressed are associated with complexities such as poverty, livelihoods, agrarian transitions, social justice or sustainability. It is important to ask how common policy responses articulate with ongoing economic, social and political transitions, and with young people's own imperatives, aspirations, strategies and activities.

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