Poverty reduction in South Asia is a precondition for sustaining any form of reforms in governance. The new public management reforms which started in South Asia from Sri Lanka taking the initiative in 1977–78 have been a decisive break from the previously practised State driven protectionist system. Investment in the region has been rising and even per capita income has shown some increase, yet the state has not been able to lead these reforms appropriately and efficiently. Thus poverty has not been reduced, ordinary people continue to languish under government programmes and the socially excluded remain outside the mainstream decision making bodies. Governance in South Asia faces the single most important challenge of poverty reduction which continues to blunt and disfigure capacity, self esteem and service delivery system to the poor. This book attempts to bring out microlevel studies from many regions in South Asia to address issues of entrepreneurship, knowledge and professionalism. As an initiator of the idea on developing a critique to the straightjacketed ‘best practice’ research, this book questions the standard practice in evaluating administrative reforms as not being the true base for knowledge. Administrators need to balance capacity and control in every implementation programme. Confining to the knowledge of ‘best practices’ may conceal enormous amount of information from the ‘less than best’ practices which may be necessary to sustain good initiatives of public managers. This book highlights areas of active networking, partnerships and collaborations amongst state and non-state bodies, NGOs and specialist Science and Technical Organizations. The true nature of governance is explained and demonstrated through the processes which otherwise pass off undetected in macro-understanding of governance.

This volume examines the persistence of poverty - both rural and urban - in developing countries, and the response of local governments to the problem, exploring the roles of governments, NGOs, and CSOs in national and sub-national agenda-setting, policy-making, and poverty-reduction strategies. It brings together a rich variety of in-depth country and international studies, based on a combination of original data-collection and extensive research experience in developing countries. Taking a bottom-up and multi-dimensional perspective of poverty and well-being as the starting point, the authors develop a convincing set of arguments for putting the priorities of poor people first on any development agenda, thus carving out an undisputable role for local governance in interplay with higher-up governance actors and institutions.

Poverty reduction has become a key international development priority in recent years. This publication examines some of the most important current conceptual frameworks and initiatives related to poverty reduction and identifies approaches taken by major international and bilateral organisations. It goes on to explore the conceptual dimensions of poverty and local governance, and the comparative advantages of decentralised governance in tackling poverty. It argues that greater involvement of local populations in decision-making processes may contribute to significant poverty reduction.

The motivation of this research paper is to shed light upon the political economy factors that determine the quality of governance for poverty alleviation policies. This issue is a crucial one because although remarkable strides have been made in some parts of the world, more than 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day. The situation begs the important question: Why have poverty alleviation efforts by developing countries not achieved the momentum necessary to improve the living standards of poor? An important reason why growth with significant redistribution has not occurred in many developing countries is that poverty reduction strategies have often been politically naive. The literature spawned by major development institutions until the 1980s did not go beyond policy prescriptions to ask under what political conditions redistributive policies could be successfully adopted. This is a relevant issue because policies reflect concrete political and social interests and it is not hard to imagine a situation where poverty-alleviating reform is hindered by vested interests. The aim of this research paper is to shed light upon the factors determining quality of governance, because poor governance is but a manifestation of these deep-rooted institutional and political biases against the collective interests of the poor.

This publication offers a framework for the empowerment of people living in poverty throughout the world that concentrates on increasing people's freedom of choice and action to shape their own lives. Based on analysis of practical experiences, the book identifies four key elements to support empowerment: information, inclusion and participation, improved accountability and local organisational capacity. This framework is then applied to five areas of action to improve development effectiveness: provision of basic services, improved local governance, improved national governance, pro-poor market development, and access to justice and legal aid. It also offers twenty 'tools and practices' which concentrate on a wide-range of topics to support the empowerment of the poor.

Every day, we are barraged by statistics, images, and emotional messages that present poverty as a problem to be quantified, managed, and solved. Global generations present the poor as a heterogeneous group and stress globalized solutions to the problem of poverty. Governing the Poor exposes the ways in which such generalized descriptions and quantifications marginalize the poor and their experiences.