Ritesh Kedia, Author at Landesa

On Women’s Equality Day, Why Agitating for Gender Equity Still Matters

Ninety-five years ago today women in the United States gained access to the ballot box, thanks to the passage of the 19th amendment. This fundamental right of any democracy was no easy fight for the suffragists of the 19th century. It took 132 years for women in the United States to access this very basic right to vote promised in the U.S. Constitution. Though the constitutional right to vote was gender neutral, conservative authorities interpreted it to mean only free (read white) male adult property owners should be entrusted with a vote.

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Why the Modi government must work on land reform before land acquisition

India’s economy has already crossed $2 trillion and is growing annually at around 6%. But these figures cannot hide the fact that 69% of the population is rural, and 70% of this, or nearly half of all Indians, still depend on land and land-based activities for their livelihoods, according to figures in the India Rural Development Report 2012-2013, released by Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation.

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Not Your Land: How the Development Community Evicted the Poor

The World Bank recently acknowledged a troubling fact: While working to rid the world of poverty through projects that required moving millions of people, such as dam construction, urban renewal, and rural development, it did not sufficiently monitor their compensation and resettlement. As a result of these failures, the World Bank is unsure whether the displaced were properly reimbursed for what they lost or provided with a new home or farmland.

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Helping Grow the “We”

There is a saying that “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your own lifetime, you are not thinking big enough.” It has been my honor to work for decades with Roy Prosterman – a man whose ideas are “big enough” for us all. And for that we all owe him a debt of thanks.

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Why Landesa Works With Governments to Alleviate Poverty

Despite an abundance of resources, dedicated efforts to alleviate poverty, generous donors, and committed development experts, we continue to live in a world where one billion of our fellow citizens live in dire poverty.

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