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This paper notes that education needs to essentially lead to sustainable development serving two-fold purpose--eradicating the problems of unemployment and poverty; and ensuring equitable distribution of wealth while ensuring the right understanding leading to a peaceful, prosperous and developed world. In its current state, technical education doesn't seem to serve the above two objectives. The paper presents a holistic view of technical education in India. In order to ensure sustainable development for India in the contemporary global scenario, the paper finds technical education to be one of the core competencies that need to be developed. The paper observes that there seems to be no linkage between the "education" being provided in the country and these problems getting solved. In order to provide a real educational solution for all-encompassing development of India, the paper suggests that "what to do" is the real question for technical education than just "how to do". The paper suggests a model for the State (province) of Punjab in India to elaborate on the model of technical education for sustainable development. [For full proceedings, see ED571459.]

This document contains six papers about and from a roundtable discussion of poverty alleviation, work, and adult learning. The "Introduction" (Madhu Singh) presents an overview of the roundtable. "Work-Related Adult Education: Challenges and Possibilities in Poverty Areas" (Enrique Pieck) describes work-related adult education strategies and argues that training alone is insufficient for poverty areas. Competence reform in Norway is examined in "The Future of Work and Adult Learning: The Norwegian Case" (Ole Briseid). "The New Role of Adult Education Institutions: From Schools to Learning Agencies" (Peter Krug) explains why educational institutions must become open learning centers and act as facilitators of the transition between schools and universities and continuing education. "Trade Unions and Adult Vocational Learning for the Informal Sector" (Christine Nathan) discusses the situation of women construction workers in India and suggests how trade unions can help them through adult education. Adult vocational education's responsiveness to those it serves is considered in "Ethical Implications of Contemporary Trends in Work and Adult Vocational Learning" (Richard D. Bagnall). Concluding the document are abstracts and the tables of contents of two United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Education publications on work-based learning. (MN)

This booklet reflects issues raised at a workshop on women's education and empowerment held at the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education. It focuses on promoting empowerment for women in educational contexts ranging from formal education systems to literacy and poverty alleviation programs. Section 1 discusses two perspectives on women's empowerment: one that advocates improving women's position and equity without radically altering the existing structure of gender relations and another that sees women's advancement as necessarily involving the transformation of an excessively male-dominated society. Section 2 focuses on how educational opportunity is not necessarily translated into personal, social, and economic gains for Caribbean women. Section 3 uses the women's program, Mahila Samakhya, implemented in the Banda district of India, as an example of empowering women through participatory adult learning. Section 4 deals with new radical discourses in adult literacy work dealing with the issues of violence and creating safe adult learning environments for women. Section 5 highlights the following challenges for adult learning: (1) giving a voice to women who have suffered violent experiences; (2) informal learning; (3) the learner's role in determining the curriculum; (4) breaking discrimination barriers; and (5) connecting formal and nonformal systems of women's adult education within the perspective of lifelong learning. (YLB)

The purpose of the study is to examine business education that aims to prepare students to understand poverty and design sustainable solutions for people living in subsistence in a yearlong course at a Midwestern U.S Land-grant university. I conduct a case study of the course in order to understand the curriculum and pedagogical arrangements and to examine the experiences of the course participants. Theoretically, my project is situated at the intersections of globalization and education studies, capabilities approach, and critical pedagogy. Theoretically informed and empirically grounded, my study offers a more nuanced understanding of pedagogical possibilities to prepare students to understand the conditions of poverty around the world and to contribute to global poverty reduction in the age of globalization.

The first Innocenti Global Seminar, which was sponsored by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), investigated the topic of Early Child Development (ECD). This summary report focuses on the three objectives of the seminar, which were to: (1) review critical issues in the field of child development so as to provide a rationale for investing in ECD programs; (2) examine stategies for the design, implementation, and evaluation of ECD activities, and review UNICEF-supported initiatives; and (3) explore issues in program implementation. To meet the first objective, research on prenatal development, and infant capacities and patterns of interaction, was reviewed. Biological, behavioral, and social factors were examined. For the second objective, a five-category model of ECD programs was delineated. Topics included increased program coverage, funding problems, methods of creating political will, the role of media in promoting ECD, program quality control, training of ECD personnel, and monitoring of programs. Successes and constraints of ECD programs in India, Benin, Nepal, Colombia, and Kenya were appraised. Efforts to address the third objective focused on policy implications; programming challenges; and the contributions of UNICEF. References number 57. Appended are the agenda, a list of participants and speakers, lists of resources and reading materials, and related items. (BC)

The 2020 Global Nutrition Report by UNICEF highlights the high rate of deaths among children under five years of age, with India being one of the top five countries. Studies suggest that more than half of these early child deaths were attributable to health issues associated with malnutrition, particularly in the case of countries with extreme poverty, scarcity of essential resources, lack of access to appropriate healthcare, and wide disparities of wealth. We situated our analysis on the lines of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory and interpreted the results through the lens of this theory. Observations from 70618 children between ages of 2-5 years old, from poverty ridden communities in India, were used. The poverty ridden households contain poorer and poorest populations classified by DHS based on wealth index. Three measures, namely, stunted, wasted, underweight and overweight were calculated according to WHO child growth standards, and used as dependent variables. The independent variables include child's biological characteristics, health status, dietary adequacy. We also analyzed the role of maternal factors such as mother's anthropometry, health status, education, access to healthcare facilities. In addition, the variables include home environmental conditions, social welfare systems and geographical location. Binary Logistic Regression model two sets of Multinomial Logistic regression models were developed for the analyses. We found that a child's health, particularly anaemia levels, vaccination and multivitamin access play a vital role in influencing a child's anthropometric measurements. Moreover, dietary diversity has a crucial role to play in forming a child's height and weight. Finally, we conclude that maternal factors including health status (anaemia levels and anthropometric measurements) and access to healthcare facilities significantly influence a child's likelihood to experience malnutrition. Three levels, namely, microsystem, mesosystem and exosystem of the Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory emerge as most significant contributors to the likelihood of malnutrition. Implications for policymakers include importance of access to healthcare as basic determinant of child well-being can help mothers to maintain and improve their health status and prevent the health issues which has direct impact on likelihood of children malnutrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India has made substantial progress in terms of overcoming national food insecurity by giving priority to self-sufficiency in food grain production with the help of green revolution. The various factors which affect the food demand and supply are population, sources of supply, per capita condition, climatic condition, lifestyle etc. There are different techniques adopted to tackle with the problems. A main objective of the qualitative requirement is to provide food safety to the consumer with honest information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inclusive growth ensures that economic growth directly serves the welfare of lower income and excluded groups of society while focusing on profitability and financial success. Inclusive growth research in management and innovation studies has been supported by the UN, WEF, OECD and World Bank. Digital technologies, digital innovation, and digital entrepreneurship can be critical drivers of growth, productivity, and ultimately, poverty alleviation among marginalized and excluded communities. Yet, there are very few IS studies that utilize an inclusive growth lens and examine the role that digital platforms can play. This paper addresses this gap and adopts a single, revelatory case study approach to explain the process of creation and management of a platform-driven ecosystem and development of capabilities for inclusion of a community of waste collectors in India. The paper presents a process framework and contributes to both inclusive growth and platforms literature while also providing practitioner insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human conflict has been a certainty since time immemorial. North East India is a region known for its multi-ethnicity and as a result ethnic conflict has had a long and violent history in the region. This has been a recurring problem affecting almost all facets of life in the areas which have experienced the perpetration of violence in the name of ethnic and cultural struggle. The effect of ethnic conflict has been far reaching on the people of the Bodo Territorial Administrative Districts (BTAD) of Assam in India. The most vulnerable section of society affected by these conflicts are the children who face multiple negative consequences, such as displacement, poverty, exploitation, homelessness, interrupted education, discrimination, unhealthy living conditions, lack of resources, psychological distress, post-traumatic stress, and many more. These, in turn, endanger children's healthy development in many ways. Research suggests that one of the primary consequences of ethnic violence on children is their exclusion from education, which is a gross violation of the right to education. The outcome of violent conflict in the BTAD is displacement of families and settlements in forest encroached areas. Statistics from the BTAD areas on education, reports from other researchers, and NGOs attest that the plight of children regarding their right to education is lacking in many aspects. Many children from forest settlements have been excluded from education, which is their right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of the issues of 'food security' and 'sustainable development' have been dominating over the past two-three decades. In order to study these issues, scholars have conducted research works from different perspectives. This paper attempts to study food security problems and threats for sustainable development from the perspective of agricultural sector. Study of the Indian agriculture and food security issues creates special interest in terms of unique social and economic life in India. Share of agricultural sector in Indian economy have been shrinking over the last three decades. However, India has become one of the biggest exporter countries of wheat, rice, millets, maize, sugarcane, oilseeds, cotton, coffee, tea and rubber. Alongside with these achievements several issues have been emerging during this time lapse. Study of these problems, their effects into the economy, possible solutions of the case are the main goals of this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market potential at rural India's Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) is huge. The BoP consumer is illiterate and poor but they have access to mobile phones. This suggests that the mobile phone can be used as a channel to deliver services to the BoP. These services, however, have to be purely voice based and cannot involve text of any kind as the consumer at the BoP can neither read nor write. Spoken web technology developed by IBM Research Labs can be used for developing voice-sites on the line of websites on the World Wide Web. Voice-sites can be interactive with content being in audio form and the consumer of the content accessing it using voice commands. The interactive voice based applications can be run by firms to deliver a bouquet of services to the BoP. The consumer is not in a position to pay for these services. For service delivery to be sustainable under these constraints, business models that can profitably deliver these services on a sustainable basis are necessary. Such business models are possible by a combination of commerce and advertising bundled with these services. This has been investigated in the RuralVoice project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, India is home to one-third of the world's poor. With 37% of the Indian population below poverty level, the direct costs of schooling reduce the probability of children attending school, thereby making it difficult to achieve the United Nations' Millennium Development Goal Two, i.e. the target of giving all children access to a full course of primary schooling by the year 2015. Therefore, there is a need for a growth strategy which could channelize an increasing proportion of public spending to human resource development and skill formation to ensure a continuous supply of quality manpower. This paper proposes a synergistic framework of government & Non- Profit Organizations linking the large number of rural population, particularly people living in Below Poverty Line (BPL) for access to microfinance-supported universal education coupled with alleviation of poverty. To combat the challenge of ensuring that the doors of capital, knowledge, and opportunity are allowed to be opened for the vast pool of the poor in terms of poverty reduction coupled with education development, all the stakeholders-government, microfinance industry and community should form synergy cooperating, collaborating, and facilitating with each other with an eye to attaining the true purpose of such relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, discourse about the Indian middle class has caught the public's imagination. However, two different stories are simultaneously being told. According to one, the high rate of economic growth has affected all sections of society resulting in a large number of people moving from poverty into the middle class. The second, however, focuses on the elitist nature of this growth suggesting that the Indian middle class has become increasingly insular with its perks reserved for the privileged sections of society. This paper focuses on whether economic growth has opened opportunities for all or whether higher paying occupations are restricted to a privileged few. Utilizing a new, comprehensive national survey of 41,500 households, the India Human Development Survey 2005 (IHDS), we show that in this situation, personal resources above and beyond human capital are of great help to jobseekers. In particular, cultural capital, and to a lesser degree social capital, critically affect job outcomes as measured by the earnings of working men between the ages of 25 and 54. Though a large portion of caste, ethnic and religious inequality is associated with differences in human and cultural capital, this effect still remains after controlling for these differences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A vast literature asserts that female-headed households tend to be poor in developing countries. Female-headed households in emergent market countries may be more vulnerable because women are thought to shoulder more economic liberalization costs than men. Female-adult only households (FAHHs), households in which no working age males are present, may have an especially high risk of poverty. However, recent scholarship critiques the feminization of poverty approach for overlooking the diversity of female-headed households. Therefore, it discounts the fact that certain development, SES, and demographic measures may predispose some FAHHs to poverty in transitional economies more than others. Islam, in particular, has been cited as a barrier in this respect. Local political and/or market characteristics, too, may have a bearing in this respect. But yet, few studies have addressed this issue in comparative perspective. This article fills this gap by examining predictors of FAHH poverty in two emergent market countries, Egypt and India, using DHS and UNDP data. Logistic regression results indicate that FAHHs are somewhat more likely to be poor in both countries, net of the other variables. However, the findings show more strongly that the odds of FAHH poverty vary in terms of development, SES and demographic indicators, as well as cross-nationally. Therefore, the results provide strong support for critiques of the feminization of poverty literature. At the same time, the Indian data cast doubt on the position that Muslim FAHHs would be more vulnerable in this regard. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This poster presentation explores the nature and quality of begging interactions in two South Asian capital cities: Delhi, India, and Kathmandu, Nepal. The major theme is the social and spatial nature of begging, and the ways in which it is subject to both formal and informal means of regulation. The presentation combines criminological and visual ethnographic perspectives. There will be a brief narrative outline, along with photographs of people begging in a variety of locations in Delhi and Kathmandu. The presentation is based on fieldwork conducted in South Asia in Spring 2004. In Delhi observations were conducted in the commercial centre of New Delhi and in Hindu and Muslim places of worship. In Kathmandu, data was collected in Tibetan Buddhist and Hindu temples, and in the citys Durbar Square. The religious ethos of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam encourages almsgiving to the poor, and the role of religious institutions in the social and spatial organization of begging was observed and documented. Beggars were also present in commercial zones, where they tended to occupy marginal locations such as pedestrian subways. Thus, it was observed that in both secular and religious contexts begging was a socially and spatially regulated activity. The presentation is intended to make a contribution to comparative criminology, with an emphasis on the regulation of deviance in South Asia, and a commentary on the role of religious institutions in the management of deviant populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]