Notes on Strategy
Why do we need to strengthen government schools? Why is it important for a practitioner to understand the local political economy of the place? Academics involved in theory and research develop insights and formulate strategies and best practices for various social, cultural and political situations. These are collated in this section so practitioners while they focus on their work on the ground, know that they are also in sync with the macro-level objectives for sustainable development.
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Privatisation and Outsourcing as Ways to Enhance Effectiveness of Public Services
Q&A with Santhakumar V | Aug 23, 2024
Are privatisation and outsourcing desirable for improving the effectiveness of public services?
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Natural Regeneration vs. Plantations as Means of Land Restoration
By Santhakumar V and Daniel Piotto | May 22, 2024
If a part of a natural forest is cut down and then a plantation of indigenous trees is created, there is a definite negative impact on land restoration. On the other hand, the creation of such a plantation in an already degraded land will have a positive benefit.
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Land Restoration in Brazil: A National Systems Perspective on Achievements and Challenges
G20 Global Land Intiative | Mar 5, 2024
Brazil has a law which compels private landowners to conserve/restore a part of their farms. Such farms include large plantations which are owned by private corporations. These plantations are an important part of the land use in Brazil.
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Land Restoration and Social Context: Opportunities for Successful Land Restoration
G20 Global Land Initiative | Oct 31, 2023
The topic of land restoration, including indigenous/traditional and scientific knowledge, should be included in different disciplines in tertiary education institutions, as well as primary and secondary education. Policymakers, practitioners and users need better training on and awareness of restoration practices.
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Land and Ecosystem Restoration: Working with Communities, Social, Economic and Institutional Aspects
G20 Global Land Initiative | Oct 12, 2023
Restoration initiatives often work as a top-down process where there is a lack of recognition or inclusivity of local communities. Although in certain parts of the world, community-driven approaches have been recognised as a policy-driven mandate, this was largely ignored in the rest of the world.
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Opportunities for Restoration as a Business : Money Does grow on Trees!
G20 Global Land Initiative | Sep 27, 2023
The voluntary carbon offsetting market is taking off after a slow start and bringing significant resources into the restoration market and is estimated to be tens of billions of dollars per year by 2030, with prices for quality projects of at least at 30 USD/Ton by 2030.
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Enabling Resources for Land Restoration: Financing, Policies, Regulation and Technologies
G20 Global Land Initiative | Sep 9, 2023
Ensuring more resources for land restoration requires a set of enabling factors which this paper addresses, namely, financing, policies, regulation and technologies.
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Aligning Development Policies for Green Jobs and Land and Ecosystem Restoration
G20 Global Land Initiative | Aug 29, 2023
Recently, the Government of Karnataka along with Azim Premji University, LibTech India, ATREE and the Foundation for Ecological Security has initiated work towards understanding the avenues for aligning MGNREGA with the goal of ecological restoration. This work was done as a pilot project in Chikkabalapur district of Karnataka.
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Financing Land Restoration: Challenges and What Needs to be Attempted
Compiled by Santhakumar V and Apoorva Bose | July 24, 2023
Restoring 150 million hectares of degraded agricultural land could generate USD 85 billion in net benefits to national and local economies, raise USD 30 – 40 billion a year in extra income for smallholder farmers, and provide additional food for close to 200 million people.
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Envisioning a National System of Land Restoration (Part II)
By Santhakumar and Apoorva Bose | April 14, 2023
The human development indicators of most Indian states are low. The development of the manufacturing sector is slow (though there has been higher economic growth during the last 3 – 4 decades) and this has slowed the transition of a land-dependent population towards industries and urban areas.
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Envisioning a National System of Land Restoration (Part I)
By Santhakumar V and Apoorva Bose | March 24, 2023
It is obvious that different socio-economic and institutional factors impact land restoration in a country. These may include laws and their enforcement, economic incentives of people which in turn are determined by national and international markets and government policies; actions of organisations that are involved in restoration, etc. -
India Needs an Intercultural Education
By Santhakumar V | Feb 24, 2023
‘Intercultural Education is the response to classroom diversity aiming to go beyond passive coexistence, to achieve a developing and sustainable way of living together in multicultural societies through the creation of an understanding of respect for and a productive dialogue between the different groups.’
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Different Motivations Behind Green and Ethical Investments Implications on Policy-making and Regulation (Part II)
By Santhakumar V | Mar 30, 2022
There is a well-known trade-off between intrinsic motivation and financial incentives or disincentives. The conventional idea that an intrinsically motivated person can be further encouraged through financial incentives need not work in all circumstances.
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Different Motivations Behind Green and Ethical Investments Implications on Policy-making and Regulation (Part I)
By Santhakumar V | Mar 18, 2022
The research on behavioural economics has brought out insights into the actual motivations of individuals. Some of these are not in tune with the concepts of rationality and self-interest within the framework of conventional microeconomics.
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Outcome-Based Funding for Social Development: A Theoretical Critique (A Discussion)
Shantanu Ghosh (SG) and V Santhakumar (VS) | Feb 15, 2022
A discussion between Shantanu Ghosh, CEO, Social Finance India and Santhakumar V, Professor, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru
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Outcome-Based Funding for Social Development: A Theoretical Critique (Part II)
By Santhakumar V | Feb 14, 2022
Government schools are expected to work on tangible and intangible outcomes and have a public service orientation. They are less likely to have an ‘outcome’ orientation and may not have an internal incentive structure that can be changed through OBF.
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Outcome-Based Funding for Social Development: A Theoretical Critique (Part I)
By Santhakumar V | Jan 18, 2022
In cases where the private gain is greater than the private cost, one can expect for-profit organisations to invest even in education and healthcare. This is evident from the functioning of fee-paying private schools or self-financing colleges.
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Education for Rural Management: Challenges and Possibilities (Part II)
By Santhakumar V | Jan 6, 2022
It is possible to think about alternative ownership structures, such as worker- or consumer-owned companies and to visualise Education for Rural Management for creating managers for these alternative organisations. It is also possible to think of ERM as education for creating professionals in the public sector and NGOs.
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Education for Rural Management: Challenges and Possibilities (Part I)
By Santhakumar V | Dec 20, 2021
Worker-owned companies can be made efficient if they are managed like privately owned firms, and then, the surplus that is generated can be used for the welfare of all workers. This may need the limiting of employment to an optimum number of workers on each day but all workers can benefit from the consequent surplus.
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Future of Development Assistance: Horizons Framework and New Financial Instruments
By M S Sriram | Dec 7, 2021
There could be an alternate approach to examine aid and design financial instruments appropriate to the objective and tenor. Distinct instruments are needed for interventions that benefit society at large in the long term with unknown outcomes and intrusive interventions for course correction in the marketplace.
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Social Purpose in Higher Education: A Debate (Part II)
By Santhakumar V, Kerry Shepard, Qudsia Kalsoom, Lorenz Probst, Paul Gannon | June 9, 2021
Those who advocate the use of higher education to educate for sustainable development know that what they really seek is some form of value education but they avoid calling it that. Instead, they use the euphemism of ‘competence’ to make it appear more acceptable to higher education. The plan works in situations where we judge the quality of education by how many pass exams, or what the students think about the teachers, but generally fails when we judge the quality of education as resulting in social change.
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Social Purpose in Higher Education: A Debate (Part I)
By Santhakumar V, Kerry Shepard, Qudsia Kalsoom, Lorenz Probst, Paul Gannon | May 13, 2021
We would all agree that the creation of autonomous-thinking individuals should be the goal of education (whether it has any direct social purpose or not). However, the majority of schools/colleges in India (and possibly in Pakistan and several such countries) fail in this regard. What happens in our education system is the outcome of many constraints… -
The Road so Far: Forest Rights Act and Constitutionality
By Devashree Pillai and Amrita C | Mar 12, 2021
It is argued that the Act is a colourable piece of legislation that is outside the legislative competence of the Parliament as it falls under the State List, and therefore, ultra vires the Constitution. The petitioners contend that the forest lands referred to in the Act are more closely associated with the item ‘Land’ instead of ‘Forests’ because it deals with the conversion of forest lands into revenue lands and pertains to rights accrued in and over such land.
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Contract Farming and Farmers’ Empowerment & Protection Bill 2020
By Braja Bandhu Swain | Dec 4, 2020
It is important to note here that the parliamentarians have failed to identify and highlight the potential implications of these bills and to redress their many limitations. While the bills have received presidential assent and are notified in the gazette on 27 September 2020, the actual effects of these ordinances can only be seen after the coming Kharif harvest.
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Governance Mechanisms in the Forest Rights Act, 2006: A Review
By Amrita Chekkutty and Suraj Jacob | Oct 13, 2020
The process of implementation of the FR Act in Kerala has many serious lapses, which could actually defeat the purpose of the original Act. One fundamental problem is the abysmal level of awareness about the Act, rights and processes among the beneficiaries and the officials. Another problem is the burden of workload, as the state nodal agency is invested with the implementation of several other welfare schemes for the Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste communities.
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Women Domestic Workers and Nurses in India’s Migration Policy: Problems and Recommendations
By Praveena Kodoth | Oct 6, 2020
To equip India’s emigration policy to deal with the emerging character of the overseas market, policymakers would need to rethink the restrictive gender perspective that has guided policy hitherto and adopt a fundamentally different perspective that empowers women migrant workers by ensuring their right to mobility and protection from exploitation.
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Complete and Effective Implementation of FRA in Kerala: Strategies and Approaches
By Seema Purushothaman and Rema Devi | Sep 24, 2020
The cultural-ecological know-how of the adivasis is of obvious value in this era of the pandemic, economic slowdown and climate change. This realisation might accelerate and support effective FRA implementation by generating necessary momentum among departments and development agencies and within the constituency of the adivasis themselves.
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Empowering Tribal People, Deepening Democracy
The Scheduled Tribes constitute nearly 1.45 percent of Kerala’s population. However, their human development indicators are significantly lower than those of the mainstream population. Their female literacy rate is nearly 36 percent lower than that of the state as a whole. Poverty among them is nearly 2.5 times higher than that of the rural population. This reflects their inadequate access to resources considering their spatial settlements in forests, their socio-cultural specificities, and historical deprivation.
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Accountability of Philanthropic Foundations
By Santhakumar V |
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Limitations in Strategies for Empowerment of Women in India
By Santhakumar V | Mar 11, 2020
This note explores the limitations of the strategies for the empowerment of women and the need to move towards a more radical approach in this regard. The work of several organisations which follow different approaches to women’s empowerment informs this note.
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Challenges in Managing Employees of an Altruistic Organisation
The role of intrinsic motivation is higher in not-for-profit organisations. Though employees in all organisations — for-profit and not-for-profit — look for certain non-monetary ways of gratification, the importance of these could be much higher in the latter.
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Thinking About Think Tanks and Universities
By Santhakumar V and Esther Agustin | Feb 10, 2020
A desirable future would be one where academic institutions move towards the space occupied by think tanks, and the latter take up, partially, the role of higher education institutions.
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Philanthropic Foundations and NGOs: Challenges in the Relationship
Philanthropic foundations may have to develop a partnership with other NGOs to further their goals. However, there are challenges in building workable partnerships for this purpose.
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Philanthropic Foundations and the Government: Challenges in the Relationship
Even when foundations are disconnected from corporate organisations and are ideologically interested in pursuing an agenda which is in the interest of people at large, there are challenges in making a positive impact.