Socio - economic development

The problems facing the countries of South and South-east Asia are common despite the diversity of their geographical conditions, because of their historical links and common colonial background. They are massive human problems, of abject poverty, social tensions arising out of the sharing of limited resources of administrative inexperience and inaptitude and bottlenecks. On the social scientists of these countries have fallen the responsibility of suggesting measures to deal with these problems. In this, their task is difficult. They have to evolve their own methods of analysing the socio-economic conditions and formulating the policies and suggest measures.

In May 1973, the Simla Conference of the Asian Association of Social Scientists laid the foundation for the formation of the Asian Association of Social Science Research Councils. In January 1975, a Seminar on Inter regional Cooperation in South and South-east Asia was held in Hyderabad with the specific object of promoting intellectual inter-action and cross cultural collaborative research between scholars and Universities. The Hyderabad Seminar succeeded in identifying specific areas in the fields of economic plann ing and urbanisation and patterns of urban development, problems of plural societies and bureaucracy and political development. The papers presented and discussed at this Seminar strikingly reveal a maturity of approach and real understanding of the key problems.