The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission adopted a reform-linked funding approach, the culmination of two decades of active debate and experimentation in the urban development sector. Yet, progress of both fund utilisation and reforms under the programme has been tardy. As a second phase of the mission is planned, the three major themes of importance are decentralisation, especially in the fiscal arena, commercial financing of infrastructure projects, and service delivery to the urban poor.

This Field Note illustrates how some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have incorporated water supply and sanitation into their Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).

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New approaches to poverty reduction developed during the last decade are reflected in two new global initiatives - debt relief for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and development of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). These initiatives are especially relevant in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as 32 of the 41 countries initially identified for such support are in this region. This desk review, based on readily available secondary sources of information, provides the main findings for the water supply and sanitation (WSS) component in these Initiatives.

Summary to be written. (Book chapter)

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Despite the widespread income disparities in urban areas, there have been only a few studies related to urban employment. However, poverty and employment in urban areas have lately begun to surface in policy documents of the National Government.

It is in this context that this study, of patterns of employment and income amongst the urban poor in an Indian metropolis, undertaken by Meera Mehta becomes a timely contribution to this much neglected field. The study begins by first reviewing the conceptual developments and especially the empirical evidence from the Indian peninsula. The detailed study of employment, mobility and labour incomes is based on a sample survey of workers in slum settlements.

The two major concerns of the study are to understand the sectoral patterns of the urban economy and their effects on employment and income of workers in the lower strata. Ahmedabad over time seems to be dominated by both informalization and tertiarization of the economy. While the fruits of Ahmedabad’s past growth were anyway shared unequally, these recent developments have apparently affected the vulnerable groups even more adversely.

The study finds that on the whole, even at the lowest strata, the labour market is clearly segmented. Enclaves of formal sector opportunities based on caste, rural origins and family backgrounds are being created with inter-generational recycling. Within the informal sector, however, self-employment emerges as an important and profitable mode. There is a significant increase in workers’ earnings due to the sectoral location even after controlling for the other influences.

In view of these findings, various policy directions for expansion of formal sector employment, development of the informal sector and education and skill development programmes are discussed.

Despite the failure of the 'modern' sector to absorb labour supplies from the rural areas, large-scale unemployment has not been rampant in the metropolitan centres, as would be predicted by competitive models. The surplus labour unable to gain entry into the 'modern' sector has been generally found to be absorbed by the rest of the urban economy which has been loosely termed as the informal sector It is only in the last decade that this sector has become a focus of research in the area of urban labour markets. 

This paper attempts to trace the conceptual developments in this emerging area of concern and to identify the different policy implications as well as the issues for further research.