ABSTRACT
DFID has been supporting urban poverty reduction efforts in India since the mid-1980s. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, DFID was the largest single bilateral donor in the urban sector, spending £ 120 million in Hyderabad, Indore, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Calcutta, which affected 1 million people. The lessons learnt from these projects (see also Chapter 8) have been built into the design of DFID's current urban portfolio in India – in Cochin, Cuttack and, more recently, 32 towns in Andhra Pradesh. A new project currently in the planning stages in Calcutta will take this process one stage further. The scale and diversity of the programme precludes any detailed discussion here. Instead, some of the key lessons learned are summarized below in two sections. The first demonstrates how DFID India and its partners in local, state and central government have deepened their understanding of the causes and symptoms of urban poverty over the last 15 years, and have begun to change their policy and programme response accordingly. This has involved an increasing engagement with social protection measures, as well as more traditional development work. The second demonstrates the importance of getting the policy and institutional context right before sustained reductions in urban poverty can take place.
