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Social safety nets are critical for mitigating the costs of crises and adjustment programmes. This paper reviews best practices in the design and implementation of safety nets. The main lessons suggest that the following are critical: having safety net instruments in place before crises occur; information on vulnerable groups to facilitate targeting; levels of spending that are adequate for this task yet consistent with sound macroeconomic policy; and administrative capacity. In this context, food-based safety nets can be an attractive option when administrative capacity is scarce, as they are conducive to self-targeting. In assessing options for minimising the adverse effects of policies on the poor and the need for social safety nets, poverty and social impact analysis (PSIA) can be a useful policy tool. In general, there is scope for more systematic PSIA and more effective social safety nets to minimise the costs of crises and adjustment programmes. The evidence so far also suggests that there is room for improving the role of global food aid as an international safety net. Global food aid is well-targeted, but the size and timing of disbursements have not been appropriate for meeting shortfalls in domestic food supply in recipient countries.

The liberalisation of India's external sector during the past decade was extremely successful in meeting the BOP crisis of 1990 and putting the BOP on a sustainable path. These reforms improved the openness of the Indian economy vis-à-vis other emerging economies. Much, however, remains to be done. India's economy is still relatively closed compared to its 'peer competitors'. Further reduction of tariff protection and liberalisation of capital flows will enhance the efficiency of the economy and along with reform of domestic policies will stimulate investment and growth. The main lesson of the nineties is that liberalisation of the current and capital account increases the flexibility and resilience of the BOP. This applies to trade, invisibles, equity capital, MLT debt flows, and the exchange market. The author's analysis confirms that in India the exchange rate is a powerful instrument of adjustment in the current account deficit. It also confirms that equity outflows are very unlikely to be a major cause of BOP problems (unlike short-term debt). The impact of fiscal profligacy on the external account has become indirect and circuitous with the implementation of external sector reforms. It operates much more through the general expectations about economic (growth) prospects and the risk premium demanded by foreign (and domestic) investors and lenders. Thus its negative effects are likely to be focused on the domestic rather than the external account. In other words, the negative long-term effects of fiscal profligacy are more likely to be felt in future on the growth rate of the economy and the health of the domestic financial sector.

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Coconut farming is an important economic activity in the state, which is one of the three major regions producing the crop. The government needs to tailor its policy on neera tapping carefully keeping in mind the nature of the crop, the constant threat that farmers face from diseases and the existing wide market for neera.

There seems to be a pervasive sense that social science research in all south Asian countries is in deep crisis and that the great institutions of social science research built in the 1950s and 1960s are in some sort of terminal decline. A study of social science research in south Asia finds, however, that the story is not quite so simple. Not all regions, institutions or disciplines share a sense of decline or crisis. In some countries such as Nepal, for instance, this is partly because the foundations of serious social science research have not been adequately created; and in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan and some regions of India, existing institutions have declined because of the cumulative impact of the political circumstances in which they had to operate, the shortage in the assured government funding of established institutions and other factors.