In 2013, India became the fourth country in the world (after Russia, the United States and the European Union) and the only emerging nation to launch a Mars probe into space. But it remains part of the group of 45 developing countries with less than 50% sanitation coverage, with many citizens practising open defecation, either due to lack of access to a toilet or because of personal preference. According to the Indian census of 2011, only 46.9% of the 246.6 million households in India had their ...
Prof. Shyama V. Ramani of UNU-MERIT has been voted one of the #100 Women Achievers of India in the category of ‘Hygiene and Sanitation’, as part of a contest organised by the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development in partnership with Facebook. The result was made public on 1 January 2016. Prof. Ramani will attend a reception lunch with the President of India, Pranab Kumar Mukherjee, on 22 January 2016 in the Ceremonial Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan Cultural Centre, in the Pr...
Prof. Shyama V. Ramani of UNU-MERIT has been working to make a small Indian village called Kameshwaram, devastated by the 2004 Tsunami, as clean as any in the world – and to document the process so that it can be replicated elsewhere. She is still grappling with the core problems of sanitation, waste management and safe water. Yet her work has had an impact on various stakeholders in the sanitation sector far beyond the village, as confirmed by her being shortlisted in the #100women achievers (I...
“We are here because we are interested in the issue of innovation and development, innovation and productivity, and to what extent innovation can help countries like India to get out of their underdevelopment… to catch up with the richer countries.” Prof. Pierre Mohnen The 8th Conference on Micro Evidence on Innovation and Development (MEIDE), held on 12 February in New Delhi, brought together researchers from around the world to discuss the importance of innovation for economic grow...
Ahead of the UN Climate Summit in Paris (COP21) set for December 2015, Prof. Shyama V. Ramani was asked to give a lecture as part of the “Economists Facing Climate Change” series. Here she explains the links between poverty and climate change: what the problems are and how we — globally — can address them. There is increasing acknowledgement of the premise that climate change is real, its impact is worldwide and it is in the interest of all countries to not only mitigate climate chan...
UNU-MERIT (United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and social Research institute on Innovation and Technology) is pleased to announce that the 8th Conference on Micro Evidence on Innovation and Development (MEIDE) will be held on 10-12 February 2015 in New Delhi, India. The conference will be part of a series of events organised with the Confederation of Indian Industries, the OECD and the World Bank on the topic of “inclusive innovation”....
Our press review features the latest publications by UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance. Output for July includes five working papers, three journal articles and a conference paper: analysing social enterprise in India, urban planning in Colombia, and the UNHCR’s work in Afghanistan, among many others. Working Papers ‘Does Shelter Assistance Reduce Poverty in Afghanistan?’ assesses the UNHCR post-return shelter assistance programme in Afghanistan, 2009-2011. This working paper finds th...
What has India’s national system of innovation achieved in the last 60 years? How has it performed in terms of building industrial capabilities and promoting development? Innovation in India, a new book edited by Prof. Shyama V. Ramani, gathers historical evidence on the accumulation of scientific, technical, innovation and industrial capabilities across different industrial sectors. It analyses how technology and innovation have shaped different sectors in India and how this evolution ha...
The year ends with two more lectures in our joint seminar series. On Monday 16 December, Prof. Manuel Mira Godinho presents “The Impact of African Science: A Bibliometric Analysis”. He argues that African research output has grown faster than the world average since 2004, while doubling in number and having higher impact than similar publications from Russia, India or Brazil. However, the continent’s production remains highly concentrated in South Africa and Egypt, both in terms of p...