India is a huge country, with 1.1 billion people living within its borders, and has a long history with the United Nations, especially the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which serves as the humanitarian aid branch of the UN. India has worked with the UNDP for 50 years, and through it has achieved success in a variety of areas, from greatly improving the strength of national government programs to improving access to information in rural districts.

Today, the UNDP is helping India pursue the poverty/human development goals it outlined in its ‘Tenth Plan’ document (every five to ten years, the UNDP creates a new set of goals; since this is India’s 10th goals paper, it is the ‘Tenth Plan’. It covers the period from 2003 to 2007). These targets include getting ALL children to school, reducing gender gaps in literacy, increasing HIV/AIDS awareness and treatment options, increasing the number of sources of clean water, and reducing poverty by 15 percentage points by 2007.

Indian flag.

These are ambitious objectives, but the UNDP seems committed to helping India achieve them: through technical and management assistance to financial aid. The UNDP is concentrating its efforts in India on improving gender equality and decentralizing the current government – both will help India achieve its 2007 goals. Gender equality is important in India because for many years, women have been regarded as second-class citizens due to traditional cultural beliefs (across the Middle East and South Asia, gender equality remains one of the biggest challenges in poverty alleviation). Changing this has been a major goal of India’s for many years. Decentralization, on the other hand, will move more power from the central government to local governments, called ‘panchayati raj’ in rural areas. This is necessary because in India, the large cities have a MUCH higher quality of life than their surrounding countryside. Many benefits that have gone to urban areas have completely skipped over the million of poor farmers and workers in rural districts. By giving locals more authority, India will be able to solve many of the poor’s problems that have come about through incompetent governance.

Top

Back to Government Case Studies Main Page

CIA World Factbook: India. 2006.

UNDP: India.

Top

Copyright © 2006 ThinkQuest Team 00282