Tribal women in India encounter deep-rooted structural barriers to economic, social, and educational empowerment. Despite their significant contributions to household sustenance through unpaid labour and informal economic activities, these efforts remain largely unrecognised, perpetuating cycles of poverty and dependency. This study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining a structured survey with a literature review, to examine the impact of microfinance on capability development among tribal women in Dahod district, Gujarat, from 2023 to 2024. This study makes three contributions to existing literature. First, it is among the first to apply propensity score matching within a convergent parallel mixed-methods design to assess microfinance impacts specifically on Bhil and Rathwa tribal women - a population systematically excluded from mainstream microfinance scholarship that tends to subsume tribal experiences under general rural categories. Second, the study operationalises an intersectional feminist framework alongside Capability Approach to disentangle how indigeneity, gender, and geographic marginality compound capability deprivations. Third, the integration of qualitative case studies with quasi-experimental estimates provides analytical depth rarely achieved in single-method impact evaluations in tribal contexts. The findings reveal that microfinance interventions significantly increase income-generating activities, leading to improved economic agency and enhanced social empowerment. However, overall impact remains constrained by persistent structural barriers. These findings are grounded in the specific socio-cultural and geographic context; while they offer analytical insights transferable to similar tribal settings, they are not statistically generalisable to the broader tribal population across India. The study concludes that achieving sustained and scalable outcomes requires coordinated efforts between government and non-governmental organisations.
A core belief in development economics is that inequality will increase initially as economic development proceeds. This belief was widely shared by development economics in the 1960s and 1970s, and was informed by the work of the Nobel Laureate Simon Kuznets who postulated that as economic development proceeds, inequality of income within a country first increases, and then decreases - the well-known Kuznets Curve. This view was also reflected in Mahbub Ul Haq's initial thinking as an economic planner in Pakistan. In this paper, we ask: is inequality a necessary consequence of economic development? We look at the cross-country evidence on the relationship between inequality and economic development, and find that the evidence is mixed, with no clear pattern both across and within countries. We then discuss selected examples of countries where inequality did not rise with successful economic development. We conclude by arguing that there is no mechanical relationship between inequality and economic development, and governments can enact policies that can lead to strong economic growth with no accompanying increase in inequality.
Agricultural cooperatives and agroecological initiatives have gained increasing relevance in debates on sustainable food systems, rural livelihoods, and food security. This Policy Forum contribution analyzyes how agricultural cooperatives and agroecological initiatives support food security and rural livelihoods in Santander, Colombia, by examining governance dynamics, institutional conditions, and their implications for collective capabilities within territorial food systems. Drawing on a review of academic literature and policy documents, combined with qualitative evidence from interviews with policymakers, practitioners, and civil society actors, the article explores how cooperative initiatives contribute to market access, income stabilization, and urban-rural linkages, while also identifying key constraints to their scaling and sustainability. The findings highlight that fragmented governance arrangements and the absence of dedicated budgets constrain the effective implementation of agroecological and cooperative-oriented policies. These institutional barriers reduce farmer agency, their opportunity to participate in decision-making, and their collective capabilities. The article concludes that strengthening agroecological and cooperative-based systems requires dedicated public resources, participatory governance, and their integration into public procurement mechanisms.
Drawing on the theoretical kaleidoscope method, this article aims to develop a pluralistic understanding of global inequality in knowledge production by integrating diverse theoretical frameworks and analysing empirical evidence on inequality in research outcomes and its underlying causes. Economic theory points to the importance of market failures in knowledge production, the key role of public and philanthropic funding of research, and how uncertainty skews investments toward low-risk activities. The theory of epistemic injustice provides insight into how unequal power relations, social structures and prejudice shape inequalities in research. The capability approach provides a unified framework for evaluating and understanding inequalities in global research that encompasses aspects related to both distributive and discriminatory injustice. While the wide gap in knowledge production between the Global North and Global South is explained largely by cross-country differences in public research investment, an expanding body of evidence highlights the influence of reputation, discrimination and systemic biases in driving global inequality in research outcomes. The study identifies policy interventions, including public policies to enhance equitable access to information and education, actions to promote a more just allocation of research funding within academia, and measures to counter prejudice and cultivate epistemic virtue among researchers.
This article revisits the capability approach by examining community empowerment in a rural Indonesian village with strong communal values. Through a qualitative case study of Andung Biru and the Tirta Pijar group, it explores how kinship and patronage can foster collective capabilities and sustainable development. While the capability approach centres on individual agency, this study highlights the role of collective agency shaped by local leadership and cultural solidarity. Tirta Pijar's micro-hydro initiative illustrates how communal resources and cooperation generate energy resilience and localised development. The findings refine the capability approach by showing that, in the Global South, capabilities are deeply embedded in shared relational patronage and traditional communal value of kinship. This underscores the need to incorporate communality and patronage into development frameworks for a culturally grounded understanding of empowerment and sustainability.
Scientific knowledge production functions as a foundational enabling capability through which societies expand and sustain social, economic, and political development. In Gaza, this capability has been systematically undermined through the Israeli occupation that has targeted scientific actors, institutions, and knowledge systems, a pattern this article conceptualises as scienticide. Drawing on human development and capability perspectives, it argues that the annihilation of scientific life constitutes a profound form of capability deprivation and undermines present survival and foreclosing future collective agency, recovery, and self-determination. This conceptual article examines scienticide across four dimensions: (1) targeted assassination and the destruction of scientific capacity and leadership; (2) institutional destruction and scientific capability collapse; (3) blockade-imposed erasure of scientific and knowledge continuity; and (4) science in the service of occupation. The article also reflects on the responses to the scienticide in Gaza by the global academia where scientific institutions, funding regimes, and academic silence and silencing enable and normalise this destruction. Together, these processes produce a double erasure: the elimination of Palestinian scientific capacity in situ and the denial of its recognition within global knowledge systems. Framing these processes as scienticide highlights the long-term developmental consequences of dismantling scientific capabilities and calls for accountability, epistemic justice, and sustained international support to rebuild Gaza's higher education and research systems as a prerequisite for human development and societal recovery.
This comment argues that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the context social policy should be carefully considered in light of its potential negative impact on the capability to aspire and the capability for voice. These two capabilities are of particular importance due to their enabling role regarding other capabilities. Social policies can act in support of the capability to aspire by providing means for realising them and opportunities to use one's voice. The use of AI systems impacts both the opportunity aspect, which is primarily connected here with the content of social policies, and the agency aspect of capabilities, which is analysed with regard to processes of social policy design and delivery. The potential negative impact is illustrated with an AI system used by the Austrian public employment service. The comment concludes with a call for developing aspirations-centred institutions and technologies.
This case study evaluates how studying Toni Morrison's trauma-focused novel, Beloved, contributed towards decolonial pedagogy within a Key Stage 5 (KS5) English Literature curriculum. The research involved an A-Level English Literature class of nine students at a co-educational independent boarding school in northern England. During students' study of Beloved, a Capabilities Approach (CA) was used to evaluate how their learning challenged epistemic injustices to instead cultivate students' "epistemic democracy" (Anderson, E. 2012. "Epistemic Justice as a Virtue of Social Institutions." Social Epistemology 26:163-173. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2011.652211) within the classroom and their "epistemic contributions" (Fricker, M. 2015. "Epistemic Contribution as a Central Human Capability." In The Equal Society: Essays on Equality in Theory and Practice, edited by G. Hull, 73-89. London: Lexington Books) to decolonial criticality. Evaluation then considers how these contributed towards pedagogical "repair" (Walker, M. 2024. "Repair in Education Spaces." Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 25:1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/19452829.2023.2297917). Data collection methods included participant observations and students' written journals, classwork and focus groups. Thematic coding informed analysis. Findings identify that small steps towards decoloniality were achieved. Analysing Beloved illuminated the traumatic reality and legacy of slavery which sparked students' critical engagement and "epistemic contributions" (Fricker, M. 2015. "Epistemic Contribution as a Central Human Capability." In The Equal Society: Essays on Equality in Theory and Practice, edited by G. Hull, 73-89. London: Lexington Books) both verbally and in writing. These reflected some "transformational learning," which perhaps constituted some pedagogical "repair" (Walker 2024) of historical injustices. However, confronting racial issues in the classroom exposed some "testimonial" and "hermeneutical" injustice felt by participants (Fricker 2015). Findings may support educators developing decolonial pedagogy and curricula.
This study examines women's well-being in Assam, India, through the lens of the Capability Approach to focus on women's substantive freedoms and lived experiences. Drawing on large-scale primary survey data, the paper constructs a multidimensional Women's Capability Index of Assam (WCIA) using the Alkire-Foster methodology at the individual level. The index captures four interrelated capability dimensions: health and hygiene, economic security, social relations, and psychological and emotional well-being, operationalised through eleven indicators reflecting both external conditions and internal freedoms, including dignity, mobility, voice, sleep adequacy, and exposure to violence. The results indicate that 31 per cent of women in Assam experience multidimensional capability deprivation, with deprived women facing substantial intensity of overlapping disadvantages. Decomposition and regression analyses reveal pronounced inequalities by education, work status, household structure, region, and social group, highlighting the vulnerability of unpaid family workers, unemployed women, and those with low education level. The findings underscore that women's capability deprivation is shaped not only by material constraints but also by social norms, power relations, and institutional contexts. By offering a context-sensitive, capability-based measure of women's well-being, the study contributes to empirical capability research in India and provides policy-relevant insights for advancing gender-equitable human development.
This paper examines how communities affected by Uganda's East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) perceive fairness in compensation for land expropriation, drawing on focus group discussions in four sampled districts and interviews with government officials. Using the capability approach as an interpretive framework, the study highlights the experiences of affected people regarding valuation, displacement and engagement with authorities. Participants consistently view compensation as unfair because of asset undervaluation, procedural exclusion and gendered payment practices, which threaten livelihoods, food security, housing, health, education and social ties. Widespread mistrust, perceived corruption and limited influence over valuation and decisions further diminish confidence in the process. Although officials emphasise adherence to national laws and safeguards, communities identify significant gaps between policy and practice. The findings show that fairness in expropriation hinges not only on monetary or procedural fairness but also on whether compensation effectively restores and enhances people's capabilities. This research provides bottom-up evidence for ongoing debates on development-induced displacement and underscores the need for participatory, gender-sensitive and capability-based compensation approaches that frame land expropriation as a human development issue rather than merely a transactional matter.
