Person:
Das, Maitreyi Bordia

Trust Funds and Partner Relations, Development Finance (DFi)

Fields of Specialization

Demography, Social Protection, Social Development, Human Development, Social Inclusion, Safety Nets, Equity, Labor Markets, Urban Development

Departments

Trust Funds and Partner Relations, Development Finance (DFi)

Last updated: April 3, 2023

Biography

Maitreyi Bordia Das is the Director for Trust Funds and Partner Relations in the Development Finance Vice Presidency of the World Bank. Based in Washington DC, she leads the furtherance of the World Bank’s trust fund reform, implementation of the Bank’s policy framework for financial intermediary funds (FIFs) and supports the ongoing World Bank Group Evolution process. Maitreyi is a leading voice to sustainable development, equity and inclusion, with a career that spans government, academia, the UN system and the World Bank. At the Bank, Maitreyi has held several advisory and managerial positions and led numerous research, policy and programmatic initiatives across urban development, resilience, water security, health, social protection and social development. She was the World Bank’s first Global Lead for Social Inclusion, is a speaker at various public forums and has an extensive publications record. In her last position as Manager in the Global Practice on Urban, Resilience and Land, she oversaw and expanded a wide range of trust funded global programs and partnerships. Having started her career as a lecturer in St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, Maitreyi has also been a MacArthur Fellow at the Harvard Center of Population and Development Studies and an advisor to the United Nations Development Program in Guyana. She has a PhD in Sociology (Demography) from the University of Maryland. Before joining the World Bank, Maitreyi was in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 22

Silver Hues: Building Age-Ready Cities
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022) Das, Maitreyi Bordia; Arai, Yuko; Chapman, Terri B.; Jain, Vibhu
Cities and countries the world over are at the cusp of epochal global trends whose impacts are likely to be more intense and more far-reaching than those of similar trends in the past. The simultaneity of the demographic transition, deepening urbanization, a technological revolution, frequent shocks brought on by health and climate emergencies, mean that one will need to plan for an older and more urban future. This report is intended as a policy document that helps articulate the idea of age-readiness while building on the idea of age-friendliness. It highlights the varied trajectories of aging and urbanization and draws on the experiences of older and more urban countries to show how others can become age-ready. It is intended for cities and towns as they prepare for an older urban age, offering examples and options to help younger cities visualize age-readiness while focusing primarily on the built urban environment. Its main audience is intended to be policymakers, city leaders, and implementing agencies, but it is also expected be useful to researchers, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, and communities.
Inclusion Matters in Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020) Das, Maitreyi Bordia
Africa has garnered global attention for its many achievements and its dynamism, and at the same time, it has taken the spotlight for its substantial challenges. As in other parts of the world, positive developments have been uneven in Africa. This report places the notion of social inclusion in an analysis of Africa’s achievements and challenges. Its interdisciplinary approach uses evidence to bring empirical weight to issues that are often debated through advocacy and contestation. It also contributes to the priority areas of a new regional strategy for the Africa region of the World Bank by focusing on women’s empowerment, digital technology, fragility, and climate change, among others. The report asks, in the wake of the advances Africa has made over the years, who is excluded, from what, how, and why. It then highlights what has been attempted in the quest of African countries for social inclusion. One of the main contributions of this report is that while grounded in the experience of African countries, it shows that Africa’s challenges in social inclusion are not unique or exceptional. It highlights examples of the remarkable innovations that abound in Africa and of the policy and programmatic movement towards social inclusion. It surmises that social inclusion must be based on a clear social contract that recognizes both the costs and benefits of policies and interventions towards social inclusion.
The Rising Tide: A New Look at Water and Gender
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-08-24) Das, Maitreyi Bordia; Hatzfeldt, Gaia
The report reviews a vast body of literature to present a "thinking device" that visualizes water as an asset, a service, and a "space." It shows water as an arena where gender relations play out in ways that often mirror inequalities between the sexes. And it examines norms and practices related to water that often exacerbate ingrained gender and other hierarchies. Informal institutions, taboos, rituals, and norms all play a part in maintaining these hierarchies and can even reinforce gender inequality. The report's key message is clear—interventions in water-related domains are important in and of themselves and for enhancing gender equality more broadly. The report discusses examples of initiatives that have had intended and unintended consequences for gender equality, and makes the important point that gender inequality does not always show up where we might expect.
Exclusion and Discrimination in the Labor Market
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01) Das, Maitreyi Bordia
The frameworks developed in this paper are based on a review of the literature on processes of discrimination and the norms and attitudes that accompany them. Intended as a background paper to the World Development Report 2013 this paper will also feed into the Social Inclusion Flagship Report by the Social Development Department at the World Bank. It is divided into six sections. This section one is an introduction to the objectives and provides the context for this work. Section two is a brief discussion of the conceptual underpinnings and measurement of labor market discrimination from a cross-disciplinary perspective. Section three lays out a typology of processes of discrimination, while section four is a discussion of the mechanisms of discrimination and the ways in which candidates are screened. Section five addresses the question of how discriminated groups react to discrimination. The final section addresses some of the ways in which occupational and labor market mobility is possible for disadvantaged groups and what policy implications it could have.
Poverty and Social Exclusion in India: Adivasis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012) Kapoor Mehta, Soumya; Das, Maitreyi Bordia
This brief describes the poverty and social exclusion of the tribal groups in India. Tribal groups or Adivasis are considered to be the earliest inhabitants of India. While India is widely considered a success story in terms of growth and poverty reduction, Adivasis in 2004–2005 were twenty years behind the average. Scheduled Tribes are often conflated with Scheduled Castes in the development literature, although they are completely different social categories. Physical remoteness and smaller numbers have gone together with political isolation and low voice in decision making for the Scheduled Tribes. There have been measures to assure defacto autonomy and self-rule to Adivasis, but implementation has been patchy. More discussion of tribal aspirations and problems from their point of view is needed, rather than an examination of such issues through the lens of policy makers, the bureaucracy, or the civil society.
Social Inclusion: What Does It Mean for Health Policy and Practice?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-11) Evans, Timothy Grant; Das, Maitreyi Bordia; Palu, Toomas; Wilson, David
This paper applies the tenets of social inclusion to health policy and practice, arguing that achieving the goal of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) will be impossible without considering social and economic inclusion. The idea of social inclusion in the achievement of UHC goes well beyond a focus on local level interventions to an expansive notion that addresses the policy environment, social practices, and institutions. The paper summarizes ways in which social exclusion affects access to health services and health outcomes. It argues that social exclusion plays out through practices, processes, and behaviors of service providers, elites, and those most likely to be excluded. Such practices may permeate the structure and function of both formal and informal institutions. Through a discussion of the design and delivery of policies and programs, the paper highlights ways in which social inclusion can be advanced toward UHC. Finally, it draws from the experience of World Bank–supported interventions to highlight illustrative actions toward social inclusion in ways that can affect health outcomes. The expected audience of this paper are teams involved in the financing, design, and delivery of health programs, both within the World Bank and outside. The paper concludes with the exhortation to define the scope of “social inclusion” so that interventions can be targeted to those who are most likely to be excluded that interventions can be targeted to those who are most likely to be excluded.
The Motherhood Penalty and Female Employment in Urban India
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-03) Zumbyte, Ieva; Das, Maitreyi Bordia
Since the 1990s, India has seen robust economic growth, rising wages, steady fertility decline, increased urbanization, and expanded educational attainment for males and females. But unlike other countries that have undergone similar transitions, urban women's employment has refused to budge, never crossing the 25 percent mark. This paper fills a critical gap in policy research on women's employment in India. The discussion is situated in the normative construction of motherhood and the gendered nature of caregiving in India. The analysis uses pooled data from six rounds of the National Sample Surveys to examine the effects of having a young child on mothers' employment in urban India over 1983-2011. The analysis also looks at household structure, and analyzes the effects of other household members on women's labor supply. The results show that although the onus of childbearing may have reduced, that of caregiving has increased. Having a young child in the home depresses mothers' employment, an inverse relationship that has intensified over time. Further, living in a household with older children and women over the age of 50 is positively associated with women's employment. These results show that the care of young children is an increasingly important issue in women's employment decisions, in a context where formal childcare is practically nonexistent. These results have significant implications for policy to raise women’s labor force participation in India.
Poverty and Social Exclusion in India: Overview
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012) Mehta, Soumya Kapoor; Das, Maitreyi Bordia
The report’s main objective is to track development outcomes for three select groups - scheduled tribes (STs), scheduled castes (SCs), and women - that have traditionally faced exclusion in India. It asks the question: how did these groups fare over a period of rapid growth in India, primarily in the nineties; and were they able to break through the historically grounded inequalities that have kept entire generations among them trapped or did traps trump opportunities? It focuses on exclusion along three spheres - services, markets, and voice and agency. Within these too, the attempt is to highlight a few select issues that offer new insights. The report draws both on national data (national sample surveys (NSS) and national family health surveys (NFHS)) as well as qualitative work for its evidence, relying more on the latter to probe heterogeneity within states and groups and incipient processes that result in exclusion.
A Closer Look at Child Mortality among Adivasis in India
(2010-03-01) Kapoor, Soumya; Das, Maitreyi Bordia; Nikitin, Denis
The authors use data from the National Family Health Survey 2005 to present age-specific patterns of child mortality among India's tribal (Adivasi) population. The analysis shows three clear findings. First, a disproportionately high number of child deaths are concentrated among Adivasis, especially in the 1-5 age group and in those states and districts where there is a high concentration of Adivasis. Any effort to reduce child morality in the aggregate will have to focus more squarely on lowering mortality among the Adivasis. Second, the gap in mortality between Adivasi children and the rest really appears after the age of one. In fact, before the age of one, tribal children face more or less similar odds of dying as other children. However, these odds significantly reverse later. This calls for a shift in attention from infant mortality or in general under-five mortality to factors that cause a wedge between tribal children and the rest between the ages of one and five. Third, the analysis goes contrary to the conventional narrative of poverty being the primary factor driving differences between mortality outcomes. Instead, the authors find that breaking down child mortality by age leads to a much more refined picture. Tribal status is significant even after controlling for wealth.
Poverty and Social Exclusion in India: Dalits
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012) Mehta, Soumya Kapoor; Das, Maitreyi Bordia
This brief is based on a Poverty and Social Exclusion in India.Caste is perhaps the oldest form of social stratificationin India.After independence, the Indian Constitution abolisheduntouchability and the erstwhile untouchablescame to be known as the Scheduled Castes(SCs).The situation of Dalits has undergone dramatic transformation over time.While caste has had significant implications for poverty and other welfare outcomes, this note focuseson two arenas—education and the labor market.Our analysis based on the National Sample Survey(NSS) data suggests that there has been expansion in education among Dalits, but not at the samepace as among the upper castes.Micro studies continue to document discrimination against SC students. In the labor market, Dalits remain largely in casuallabor. Education is considered a panacea to poor labor market outcomes and overall it has positive effects for all men.It would nevertheless be naïve to dismiss the changes in caste dynamics, more so over the past two decades. Attendant to the economic changes, social movements asserting the power of Dalits have swept some states and have given Dalits a sense of political voice and agency. In sum, we find that despite localized changes,there have been modest changes for Dalits in the aggregate.