United NationsDevelopment Programme

United Nations Development Programme55 Lodi Estate, P.O. Box 3059New Delhi - 110003, IndiaTel: + 91-11-46532333 Fax: +91-11-24627612http://www.undp.org.ine-mail: info.in@undp.org Empowered lives. Resilient nations.

UNDP IN INDIA2012

Central Government PartnersThe Planning Commission, Government of IndiaDepartment of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Government of IndiaMinistry of Rural Development, Government of IndiaMinistry of Law and Justice, Government of IndiaMinistry of Environment and Forests, Government of IndiaMinistry of External Affairs, Government of IndiaMinistry of Home Affairs, Government of IndiaMinistry of Human Resource Development, Government of IndiaMinistry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of IndiaMinistry of Tribal Affairs, Government of IndiaMinistry of Panchayati Raj, Government of IndiaMinistry of Power, Government of IndiaMinistry of Steel, Government of IndiaMinistry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government of IndiaMinistry of Urban Development, Government of IndiaMinistry of Women and Child, Government of IndiaNational AIDS Control Organisation, Ministry of Health, Government of IndiaNational Disaster Management Authority, Government of India

Copyright © UNDP India 2012. All rights reserved. Published in IndiaPrinted on FSC certified paperCover & Inside Cover Photos © Graham Crouch, Jay Mandal, Tom Pietrasik, Ranjan Rahi, Samrat Mandal, /UNDP India

Accelerating growth, rising inequality and India's human development challengeHigh average growth of over 8 percent annually between 2007-2011, remarkable resilience during the global financial and economic crisis, a vibrant civil society, and pioneering rights-based legislations illustrate the strength of India as the world's largest and fastest growing democracy. India has emerged as a major leader in key global and South-South initiatives. Steady improvement in human development and reduction in the percentage of population in poverty from 45% to 37% between 1993-94 and 2004-05 have been registered.

However impressive these achievements, significant challenges remain. While MDG goals on poverty, education, and HIV are on track at aggregate levels, targets for reducing hunger, maternal and under-5 mortality, and improving sanitation are unlikely to be met. Eight highly populated Indian states are home to 421 million multidimensionally poor people, more than in 26 poorest African countries combined. India is ranked 134 out of 187 countries and UN-recognized territories according to the 2011 Global Human Development Report.

Marginalized groups such as scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) continue to have low human development attainments. Forty-seven percent of India's rural tribal population lives below the poverty line. Persistent gender inequity is reflected in the lowest child sex ratio since independence at 914 and women continue to face exclusion in social, economic, political domains and gender-based violence. The challenge of tackling poverty, inequality and exclusion remains critical to India.

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UNDP IN INDIA 2012

UNDP IN INDIA 2012

Government of India – UNDP partnershipFor close to five decades, UNDP has partnered with the Government of India, civil society and the people of India to help them find their own solutions to global and national development challenges. Based on a five-year Country Programme Document, cooperation between the Government and UNDP (2008-2012) has focused on strengthening inclusion of disadvantaged groups and supporting strategies that address economic and political barriers to greater inclusion.

UNDP in India: Supporting India’s development priorities

Democratic Governance

HIV andDevelopment

Energy and Environment

Poverty Reduction and Livelihoods

Disaster RiskReduction

Valued and relevant development partner

Several evaluations including the Mid-Term Review of the CPAP (2010), Assessment of Development Results (2011) and a range of Outcome Evaluations emphasize UNDP's strong relationship with the Government of India that considers UNDP a relevant and valued development partner.

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UNDP's geographic focus

Madhya Pradesh

Orissa

Rajasthan

Uttar Pradesh

Jharkhand

Chhattisgarh

Bihar

In particular, Evaluations have noted UNDP's significant contributions on human development, improving governance of key national schemes, emphasizing climate change and energy efficiency, setting up of state livelihood missions, putting disaster management on the national agenda, providing strategic policy support on HIV and development and sharing knowledge through Solution Exchange.

Leveraging India's development experience

To build lasting change that can enable transformational results, UNDP adopts a combination of three broad strategies - upstream policy analysis and support, strategic pilot demonstrations for up-scaling, and south-south cooperation. A new Strategic Partnership Agreement between UNDP and the Government of India will promote strategic engagement on south-south and trilateral partnerships. This new partnership will leverage India's development experience and technologies to further the cause of sustainable human development in other developing countries. An International Centre for Human Development has been designed in consultation with the Ministry of Human Resource Development and is ready for approval and roll out.

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Policy support to formulation of

th12 five year plan

In 2011, UNDP participated in several working groups and a steering committee of the Government of India focused on

thformulating the 12 Five-Year Plan.

To augment the work of the Committee on Women's Agency and Child Rights, UNDP advocated for and set up the group addressing gender and macroeconomics issues. The Group also examined the effectiveness of gender budgeting and assessed the impact of economic reforms and economic liberalization on women and children. UNDP contributed to the Working Group on National Rural Livelihood Mission to ensure participation of civil society organizations in livelihood generation across marginalized communities and groups. The Working Group on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) benefitted from UNDP's contribution to a blueprint for reforming the Act. UNDP contributed to the Working Group on Sustainable Ground Water Management by suggesting strategies to prioritize domestic water needs. The Working Group on Disaster Management drew up a roadmap and policy framework to encourage public-private participation and greater community involvement in disaster management, identify disaster mitigation

capacity building programmes for central, state and district governments, and enhance dissemination of information to increase public awareness. The Working Group on Panchayati Raj Institutions and Rural Governance aimed to strengthen district planning, strategize on a comprehensive approach to developing capacities of Panchayati Raj Institutions and review performance of key legislations.

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UNDP IN INDIA 2012

UNDP has supported state livelihood missions in Jharkhand and Rajasthan to develop strategies to enable marginalized households to improve skills, diversify livelihoods and access credit and markets. These strategies have fed into a nation-wide National Rural Livelihoods Mission and UNDP support has enabled a stronger inclusion of tribals and people with disabilities. Building sustainable livelihoods also requires greater access of the rural poor to financial products and services that can provide a much needed buffer against vulnerability. UNDP supported prototypes in some of the most backward districts in the country are demonstrating approaches to deepen financial inclusion through innovative product design and enabling greater access to flagship health insurance schemes such as the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana.

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People's voice in planning

Accountability and transparency in flagship national schemes

UNDP in India has been investing in developing institutions and processes that bring voices of poor women and men into policy dialogue to promote inclusive and sustainable development. For the first time, more than 3,000 people belonging to persistently excluded population groups and regions, participated in what is now widely recognized as the first-ever people's

thmid-term appraisal of the 11 Five Year Plan. Owing to the success of this initiative, the National Planning Commission sought UNDP's support to replicate this process of consultation, this time with 850 civil society groups, for the preparation of the Approach

thPaper to the 12 Five-Year Plan.

UNDP support to MGNREGA, the world's largest employment guarantee programme, has enabled greater focus on accountability, transparency and operationalizing demand-driven legal guarantee provisions; delays in wage payments; improving grassroots planning, quality of assets; designing capacity development programmes and strengthening monitoring. A recent evaluation notes that UNDP presented the Government with an invaluable rapid assessment of what is happening on the ground and an objective, outside view of the programme. UNDP supported pilots such as the one which enables transparent wage payments to workers using biometric authentication has been endorsed for upscaling by the Ministry of Rural Development and is outlined in the National Framework for Biometrics enabled ICT for People's Empowerment under MGNREGA published by the government.

Supporting decentralization; deepening governance

UNDP's support to decentralization processes is central to the human development approach. Preparation of district level Human Development Reports has emerged as a key input into district planning exercises. UNDP's partnership with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj since 2008 has resulted in the training of 2.4 million local elected representatives on local governance issues which in turn has facilitated better local governance.

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Empowering women – Social, economic and political

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A prototype in partnership with the IKEA Foundation in eastern Uttar Pradesh takes an integrated approach to empowering women in social, economic and political spheres. In a short span of two years, results have been encouraging. Local elections in the state witnessed a 200 percent increase in women elected to local governance institutions; wide-scale social mobilization has boosted literacy and leadership skills amongst women; and support to building business acumen through evaluating business ideas, negotiating deals and accessing credit has resulted in the registration of the first-ever women's dairy producer company. The Swaayam Ksheer Producer Company will soon have an equity shareholding of 12, 000 women.

Award winning energy efficiency models

Putting communities at the centre of sustainable natural resource management

UNDP India supports interventions in three areas - demonstrating the potential of biomass as a rural energy source; supporting the government to expand the market for solar energy and enhancing energy efficiency technologies and approaches in key energy intensive sectors. Lessons learnt from biomass energy prototypes have contributed to modifications in national policy to support small scale biomass power generation units. UNDP is also supporting government efforts to encourage the use of solar energy in thermal applications. Successful prototypes in energy intensive sectors such as steel, tea and brick, largely funded by private equity have demonstrated a 15-40 percent reduction in energy consumption.

UNDP initiatives are demonstrating the potential for higher incomes through growing, conserving and selling medicinal plants and other non-timber forest products for poor rural communities. Forest departments in nine states have set up and operated a network of medicinal plant conservation areas – forests rich in rare and endangered medicinal plants – for research and educational centres devoted to maintaining and studying the diversity of medicinal plant species. In the protected Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve, coral reef cover has increased by 9 percent between 2005 and 2009 and has contributed to the Coastal Zonal Regulation Notification issued in 2011.

Building sub-national capacities for responding to climate change

The Ministry of Environment and Forests has adopted a common framework developed by UNDP which serves as a guide to states preparing climate change action plans. In 2011, UNDP extended support to Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bihar, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Lakshwadeep, Madhya Pradesh, Pondicherry and Uttarakhand to prepare State Action Plans on Climate Change.

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UNDP IN INDIA 2012

300 million empowered to deal with disaster-related risk The Government of India-UNDP Programme between 2002 and 2009 supported large-scale behavioural change and awareness building initiatives to tackle vulnerabilities and manage risk in 150,000 villages and 176 districts across 17 states. The Programme, considered the largest anywhere in the world was supported by a range of partners including the Australian Agency for International Development; European Commission; Department for International Development, UK; Disaster Preparedness Program of European Commission's Humanitarian Aid Department; Government of Japan, United States Agency for International Development; United Nations Trust Fund; and United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

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Accelerating progress towards international commitments

Enhancing effectiveness of national policy on HIV

From margins to the mainstream- Sexual minorities

India was one of the first developing countries to join the Montreal Protocol in 1992 and commit to protecting the ozone layer. UNDP has been supporting government efforts to phase out production and consumption of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), carbon tetrachloride (CTCs), and halons. As a result of this support, the phase-out was achieved 17 months ahead of schedule leading to further partnership on this issue.

UNDP conducted the first-ever study on the socio-economic impact of HIV on households which has been widely quoted in the media, government and the United Nations. Based on this, policy support was provided to National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) to develop national policies for gender and HIV; for greater participation of people living with HIV and development of a programme framework for reducing HIV vulnerabilities of migrants. Policy changes in 35 government schemes across the country have enabled women affected by HIV to access entitlements such as free transport, nutritional support, legal aid, redressal, micro grants, short stay homes, education, pension and so on.

As a result of sustained advocacy by UNDP and partners, the Census of India, the

world's largest exercise to identify and count India's billions has included transgenders to be counted in the 'other' category. The National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) has also broadened the inclusion criteria for marginalized groups to include transgender or hijra ensuring access to free legal aid. UNDP support also enabled the transgender community, for the first time, to directly provide policy inputs for

ththe 12 Five-Year Plan by the Planning Commission.

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From communities to institutions: The next phase of cooperation Ph

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The Disaster Risk Reduction Programme launched in 2009, aims to develop capacities for disaster risk reduction by strengthening the government's disaster management institutions at state, district and urban levels. Ten state disaster management agencies have been strengthened to implement the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and two states – Kerala and Andhra Pradesh have developed new state disaster management plans. This next phase of cooperation adds two important dimensions to reducing disaster risk – enabling safer cities through undertaking hazard vulnerability assessments, modifications of building codes and so on, and climate adaptation through a new partnership with AusAID to address climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction.

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Inclusive Growth

Decentralized Governance

Gender and Inclusion

Sustainable Development

CHALLENGE: Persistently excluded groups remain outside the trajectory of thIndia’s economic development (12 Plan)

STRATEGY: Apply sustainable human development approach and lens

PARTNERS: Government of India, State Governments, UN agencies, CSOs, private sector, academicians and researchers, persistently excluded groups

Human development approach in the next UNDP India

Country Programme Document (2013-2017)

Looking to the future

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UNDP IN INDIA 2012