Ending Poverty in South Asia: Ideas that Work is one of the few books on empowerment that combines a conceptual framework with a practical framework and distills the key lessons without suggesting magic bullets. Written by program champions themselves the

DEVELOPMENT CANNOT BE IMPOSED FROM THE OUTSIDE. IT HAS TO HAPPEN FROM WITHIN. This groundbreaking book from South Asia shows how homegrown experiments can be scaled up to transform the lives of millions of poor women and men in the developing world. Here are stories of development ideas that work?and of the visionary individuals who were determined to see them succeed. These achievements have taken place against all odds, in countries struggling with widespread corruption, weak governance, minimal infrastructure, deep-rooted social divisions, and poorly functioning judicial systems. South Asian economies are booming, yet millions are still excluded from participation in this growth. This book offers valuable lessons in how to make markets and services work to benefit poor people directly, enhancing their dignity and freedom of choice. Written by program insiders, these case studies show how governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector can initiate change, learning, expanding and adapting as they go. Ending Poverty in South Asia is an essential tool for policy makers, social scientists, and development practitioners?indeed for all who are interested in tackling poverty and growth issues from the bottom up.

The Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015: Ending Poverty and Sharing Prosperity was written jointly by the World Bank Group (WBG) and the International Monetary Fund, with substantive inputs from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This year's report details, for the first time, progress toward the WBG's twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity and assesses the state of policies and institutions that are important for achieving them. The report continues to monitor progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Also for the first time, the report includes information about high-income countries. It finds that while gaps in living standards have been closing in many countries, the well-being of households in the bottom 40 percent, as measured by the non-income MDGs such as access to education and health services, remains below that of households in the top 60 percent. The focus of this year's report is on three elements needed to make growth more inclusive and sustainable: investment in human capital that favors the poor, the best use of safety nets, and steps to ensure the environmental sustainability of economic growth. These three elements are imperative to all countries' development strategies, and are also fundamental to global efforts to achieve the twin goals, the MDGs, and the Sustainable Development Goals that will succeed the MDGs. Global Monitoring Report 2014/2015 was prepared in collaboration with regional development banks and other multilateral partners.

Across South Asia in the last two decades, there has been widespread emphasis on governance reforms aiming to reduce poverty through Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The recent development agenda has had great impact over the region , and this book finds that it largely widens the gap between the rich and poor, which combined with rising inflation, contributes to political instability. The book analyses the discourses of development agenda and governance crisis and provides a survey of the region by not only focusing on India, Pakistan and Bangladesh but also on the smaller countries in the region, such as Bhutan. Explaining three components of the development agenda as criteria for economic development – poverty reduction, governance reforms and civil society participation through liberal democracy – this book explores the consequences of the neo-liberal democracy and recent development agenda coupled with governance reforms. This work argues that the political economy of South Asia is largely derived from experiences of historical colonialism and recent changes driven by contemporary rise of India as a global power after the triumph of new-liberal democracy and market capitalism in the post-cold war era. It proposes a strengthening of the instruments of endogenous governance and people's participation in South Asian countries to reduce poverty through MDGs and other development goals in combination with top-down and bottom up approaches. Offering an understanding of governance and development in the context of the South Asia, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Political Economics, International Development Studies, Political Science, and Governance Studies, as well as policy makers.

Presents the proceedings of an informal workshop on poverty reduction in South Asia sponsored by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the World Bank. This workshop on poverty reduction in South Asia brought together participants from a wide range of related fields. They identified several areas of consensus, clarified issues for further research, analysis, and discussion, and suggested possible future steps. Although much has been done to alleviate poverty, the pace remains slow, leading donor agencies to look for new approaches. Much success has been achieved in community-based and participatory programs, some of which incorporate insight from programs launched by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The Aga Khan Rural Support Program currently serves as a respected model. The participatory components are already included in a number of World Bank-financed programs while the Bank considers their incorporation even further. This is in line with the consensus that emerged from the workshop--that community-based participatory programs in South Asia hold great promise and provide a firm basis for pursuing such strategies through research, evaluation, and operational experimentation.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.