It is now clear that the global financial and economic crisis,
even though originating in the western world has affected the
developing countries very badly. It is threatening to set back
the gains made over the past decades in terms of poverty
alleviation and achievement of the millennium development goals
by developing countries. Millions of people have lost their jobs
and have been pushed back into poverty. The impact is
particularly severe in developing countries because of very
large concentration of poor, unorganised and vulnerable people
combined with a general lack of social security system and
limited capabilities of the governments to take care of the
affected sections. While the so called 'green shoots' of
recovery are beginning to be spotted, the western economies are
unlikely to regain their status of being the engines of growth
for the world economy in the near future. A global crisis of
such proportions obviously needed a global response even though
the national governments across the world hav