Desai & Associates and Villgro Innovations Foundation are proud to announce the release of their groundbreaking white paper titled, 'A Practitioner's Guide to Effective Blended Finance Solutions for Social Enterprises.' Supported by the Lemelson Foundation, this white paper presents the key barriers and opportunities to scaling blended finance solutions for social enterprises and SMEs in India and bridge the financing gap faced by them.

Over the past few years we have witnessed how the COVID-19 pandemic has compounded existing inequalities in India, across critical sectors such as healthcare, education and MSMEs. Therefore, the need of the hour is to look beyond traditional models of socioeconomic development and embrace more innovative models of financing social impact such as blended finance. This white paper – “Unlocking the Promise of Blended Finance in India” – is the first in a series of such analytical outputs that are a part of a broader effort by Impact Investors Council (IIC) and Desai & Associates (D&A) to socialise the development community and the Indian government on the benefits of blended finance to support their financial and development agendas.

A short history of the orientation of planning in India provides a basis for defining the role of planning in a liberalised economy

The links between the demographic dividend and growth have been examined by researchers by looking at the experience of developing countriesThis paper explores this argument and see whether the expected changes in India’s population size and structure will create a supply-side potential and the policy measures required for realising this.

India is at the cusp of a major transition. Within a generation a society predominantly of low income rural agriculturists will become one of middle income, urban, industrial and service workers. The absolute size of the rural population will start declining in a decade or so and a massive occupational and locational shift will move a 100 million people from rural and agricultural work to factories and service establishments in cities. There are other transitions that will accompany this. One is the so called demographic dividend - the bulge in working age population in the North. The South on the other hand will see a rising proportion of aged retirees from the work force and face labour shortages, which are already evident in current migration trends. All this will happen in a global environment where new technologies that replace skilled labour with computer controlled machines will dull the edge of comparative advantage of low cost labour. This paper outlines an agenda for development focussing on shifting the focus of growth to the North, ensuring high growth in industry and services, promoting an energy transition,coping with the urban challenge, establishing a structured social security system, conserving the environment and reforming politics

The optimism about growth prospects of the Indian economy rests to a large degree on the acceleration in growth seen since 1980 and even more so since 2003-04. Hence, the first part of the paper reviews the growth record of the economy since 1950, the reasons that underlie the acceleration and the prospects at present. The case for more rapid growth also rests to some extent on a comparision with other developing countries, particularly with some fast growing economies in Asia. Hence, the second part deals with some international comparisons. The third part draws some lessons from this review of the past and tries to highlight some of the key conditions for sustaining high growth over long periods. The paper ends with a discussion in the last part of what India would be like if we were to succeed

Presents the history of and the case for the participation of NGOs and civil society in the UN with an elaboration od the multistakeholder approach of the Internet Governance Forum.