The desctruction and cleanup after Cyclone Hudhud hit Andhra Pradesh. On October 12, 2014, Cyclone Hudhud, a category 4 cyclone with wind speeds exceeding 220 km/hour bore down on to the city of Vishakhapatnam in the state of Andhra Pradesh on the eastern coast of India. The city, with a population of over 1.8 million people and neighboring districts ...
Instructor and Students at the Bangladesh Korea Technical Training Center, Chittagong. Credit: Mahfuzul Hasan Bhuiyan Bangladesh has a major opportunity to address one of its most pressing development challenges: creating 20 million new jobs over the next decade. And the trade agenda will be a centerpiece of any strategy that seeks to address this challenge. Join me for a Facebook Q/A chat ...
The Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is a semi-autonomous tribal region in northwestern Pakistan, bordering Pakistan's provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan and Afghanistan to the west and north. It consists of seven tribal agencies and six frontier regions and are directly managed by Pakistan's Federal Government. FATA has been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. The region has seen conflict and instability for almost ...
Boat passengers in rural Bangladesh. Photo credit: Erik Nora When my team and I saw this boat passing by us in July 2013 in rural Bangladesh, near the border with Mizoram, Northeast India, and Myanmar, I felt immediately empathic. How many people are on that boat? Eighty? Does it have a motor? Can those people swim, especially the women? No ...
Talti village in Dhading district in Nepal: A new micro hydropower plant has made it possible to open an agro-processing plant. Credit: The World Bank Fifteen years ago, I started a new job in the Sindhupalchowk district in Central Nepal. I was working in the rural energy development section of the District Development Committee and supervised technical support for ...
Discussing public services in Pakistan. Credit: PGEB/MDTF I arrived in Pakistan right after the third round of local elections held in most provinces on December 5. This was the first local election in 10 years in most places of the country. Voters elected council members of three tiers of local governments: district, urban councils, and union council/ward.How will these elections ...
Panoramic cityscape of Karachi in Pakistan. Karachi’s urbanization has had a physical impact on surrounding cities, creating sprawling and underleveraged agglomerations Credit: World Bank With Pakistan’s urban population expected to increase by about 40 million people to an estimated 118 million by 2030, immediate action is needed to transform the country’s cities into livable, prosperous places. That was the message ...
Indian woman cleaning up solar panels in the province of Odisha, India. Credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith / Panos Pictures / Department for International Development With only 43% of its households with access to electricity, Odisha’s economic development lags behind that of other states in India. However, it is home to rich water reserves, wildlife, forest, minerals, and renewable energy sources, which ...
Landscape of terrace fields and homes in Bhutan. Credits: Curt Carnemark / World Bank The mountain kingdom of Bhutan may not seem an obvious place to look for lessons on addressing climate change. But on a recent visit I was impressed with how much this small country has achieved and also with its ambition. Bhutan has much to teach ...
Pakistani boys and girls. Credit: The World Bank Violence against women is a pervasive issue in Pakistan. The problem manifests itself in many ways, most of them extreme: honor killing, spousal abuse including marital rape, acid attacks, being burned by family members, attempted murder at the hands of husband or in-laws, or even driving a woman to suicide. According ...
Pakistani boys and girls. Credit: The World Bank Violence against women is a pervasive issue in Pakistan. The problem manifests itself in many ways, most of them extreme: honor killing, spousal abuse including marital rape, acid attacks, being burned by family members, attempted murder at the hands of husband or in-laws, or even driving a woman to suicide. According ...
An Indian woman cooking. Photo credit: Romana Manpreet and Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves यह एक सच्चाई है: लकड़ी, चारकोल, कोयले, गोबर के उपलों और फसल के बचे हुए हिस्सों सहित ठोस जलावन (सॉलिड फ्यूल) की खुली आग और पारंपरिक चूल्हों में खाना पकाने से घर के भीतर होने वाला वायु प्रदूषण दुनिया में, हृदय और फेफड़ों की बीमारी ...
Traffic jam in a street in Old Delhi. Credit: Yann Doignon / World Bank As an intrinsically-optimistic Brazilian, my new assignment following India’s economy suits me well: India is one of the few bright spots in a somber global economy and is set to become the fastest growing large economy in the world. Our recently-released India Development Update projects India’s GDP ...
How youth in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are linking to the creative economy and curating culture Join us at the Art Tech Festival in Peshawar! Register to attend on the website: http://www.arttechfestival.com/ What does art have to do with technology? Just ask Mahoor Jamal, a fashion illustrator and portrait artist from Peshawar, who uses Instagram—an online photo site—to showcase her work and connect ...
Dechen inside her house in Bhutan. Credit: World Bank Dechen, a shy, soft- spoken, 31 year-old divorcee, unexpectedly lights up when I enquire about her poultry farm. A single mother of three children (aged 11, 6 and 3), she has strong reasons to feel good about what she does. It’s her sole responsibility to take care of her family ...
Economic Growth in Pakistan is expected to accelerate from 4.0% in 2014 to 4.5% in 2016. What are some reasons for this moderate improvement and how could it unlock its potential to grow even faster in the future so that more of its people can benefit from and contribute to greater prosperity?How is Pakistan doing? There has been an ...
Sri Lanka is in many ways a development success story. Growth of income per person in Sri Lanka has averaged a little more than 7 percent a year over the past five years. That follows average growth of just over 5 percent a year in the preceding nine years. Among the six largest South Asian countries, Sri Lanka has ...
Details matter for inclusion The Metro Cable in Medellin has facilitated greater access to mobility, services, and opporunities through connecting poorer neighborhoods with facilities and services throughout the city. Joe Qian/World Bank Cities are created for human experiences and not for satellites in the sky. So why are there so many cities that while look impressive on a map, exclude ...
South Asia can now reap the benefits of greater regional integration it once enjoyed before its partition into various countries. But first, the region must break down the barriers that impede its intra-regional trade.
Traditional house in Nepal's Central Hills. Credit: ABARI In Dolakha, a Thangmi woman rises early in the morning to mix together a paste of manure and clay. She kneels down on the floor of her broken home and smooths the mixture over the careworn earthen floor in preparation for another day of living in the earthquake’s aftermath. Over the ...
