Poverty Alleviation and Cluster Development

Under cluster development programme of UNIDO one of the POC ( Proof of Concept ) initiated was to explore the link between clusters focused interventions and poverty levels. Initially, it was very difficult to establish that clusters and poverty were connected. Dr Khalid from University of Manchester, UK tried to answer some these questions in his recent presentation in USA in Oct, 2007 (http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/256,1,Competitiveness of Small Enterprises: Clusters, Business Environment and Local Development ‘Clusters, Territorial Competitiveness, Poverty and Social Sector Integration’ ) Among the three evidences one of the evidence of his presentation was work done by UNIDO in Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh, India. He primarily looked into characteristics, dynamics, poverty nodes in the cluster to explain the relationship. As consequence of UNIDO’s intervention one of the important things happened is corporatisation of artisans specially in Chanderi, an interesting story in todays's Economic Times( http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/News_By_Industry/Cons_Products/Weavers_to_become_shareholders_of_Fab_India_subsidiaries/articleshow/3013640.cms )