Infosys, ITC CEOs shine in poverty alleviation survey

Nandan Nilekani of Infosys and S Sivakumar of ITC rub shoulders with Mohammad Yunus and Verghese Kurien as messiahs of development in a new report on poverty alleviation penned by the World Bank.

The report 'Ending Poverty in South Asia' tries to crack the code for success of poverty alleviation programmes in South Asia, and finds certain common principles behind their success.

It says that visionaries and leaders are a must to inspire and drive a great development programme.

It also finds that private sector participation can help drive rapid expansion, as in the e-Choupal scheme of ITC covering 30,000 villages.

A successful large-scale programme is initially led by tenacious individuals who did not start off as stars but became stars in the process of starting, nurturing and spreading something that worked, says the report edited by Deepa Narayanan, senior advisor on poverty reduction and economic development network of World Bank, along with economist Elena Glinskaya.

The report looks at large-scale efforts to remove poverty in South Asia. These include efforts of governments, NGOs, corporate leaders and communities.

Talking of government schemes, it says that often successful schemes have exceptionally talented IAS officers behind them. It names officers like K Raju and Vjay Kumar in Andhra Pradesh, Rajeev Chawla in Karnataka, and R Gopalakrishnan and Amita Sharma in Madhya Pradesh.

Other leaders have come from civil society and have become folk heroes, it says citing Yunus and Verghese Kurien.

From the private sector, Nilekani and Sivakumar have been recogniaed for their role in brining about positive societal change.

Another golden rule for success in a poverty reduction effort is to have rules and incentives, the report says. It cites the Andhra Pradesh programme where self-help groups have the right to hire and fire workers who support them.

In Tamil Nadu, it cites changes in regulatory framework, leading to flow of private funds into infrastructure ventures.

The report also finds participatory approaches rewarded with success in most such efforts. It cites the examples of SEWA , of the self-help groups in Andhra Pradesh, and the community-run schools in Madhya Pradesh.