The dramatic increase in yields of wheat and rice in the 1960s and 1970s in India, along with many other countries in the post-colonial world, was framed as a technological breakthrough made possible by miracle hybrid seed varieties. This breakthrough ostensibly averted mass scale hunger and was...
13 June 2019
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines child labour as work that “deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development”. Currently, 152 million children are recognised as being involved in child labour....
12 June 2019
Engaging research with policy means dealing with the realities of partnering with those whose agendas and mandates differ to your own. The Impact Initiative for International Development Research, which has spent the last four years supporting over two hundred research projects funded by the...
11 June 2019
10 June 2019
10 June 2019
The framing of malnutrition as a global problem which affects us all is long overdue. Viewing it as such demands more systemic, whole-of-society approaches that align with the universality of the Sustainable Development Goals. Such a framing also highlights certain challenges, some of which are...
5 June 2019
My encounter with Bangladesh’s ‘green revolution’ began in 1986 in eastern Bangladesh where I undertook village level fieldwork for a PhD on agrarian change. The focus was to understand how rural households were interacting with high yielding seeds, mechanised ploughing and irrigation,...
5 June 2019
For the last few years, IDS has been gathering evidence on the social, economic and political dimensions of epidemics in different contexts worldwide, seeking to improve the way social science is used to improve response planning and preparedness. IDS researchers have recently been collaborating...
4 June 2019
With only 11.5 years to address runaway climate change, governments and businesses are under pressure to increase their efforts and develop alternative strategies for alternative approaches to growth and development. The garment industry—one of the biggest polluters and greatest producers of...
3 June 2019
With the plastic waste crisis gaining increasing attention, both developed and developing countries are under pressure to find solutions. Bans of single-use plastics have not succeeded in many cases. Could taxing plastic production be the answer? India’s plastic problem India generates...
28 May 2019
The last week has seen major gains for nationalist, populist parties in elections, both in Europe and India. Is this the end of the centre-ground consensus? What are the alternatives? In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to victory on the back of anti-Muslim rhetoric and Hindu...
28 May 2019
I had the privilege of participating in a process led by the Japanese think tanks of the T20 (Think 20) to prepare policy briefs to feed into the deliberations of the G20 taking place in June. I was involved in producing the policy brief Deliberate Next Steps Toward a New globalism for Universal...
24 May 2019
