Social, economic and political development in India: leading issues and emerging crises

As the country gets closer to the next century things are gradually turning out so very different from what the earlier leaders, planners and policy-framers had visualised. For instance, the overall growth rate has turned out to be much lower than projected and further with continuous rise in prices, the situation has become all the more grim. And the Government does not appear to be in a position to tackle this phenomenon despite its coming out with several policy pronouncements which with grossly indifferent and corrupt administration fail to take off. Thus the country has been involved in a vicious circle of shortages, high prices and black economy where unaccounted money gets accumulated in the pockets of a few members in the society while the vast majority of population are continuously growing poorer, despite rising production in agriculture and industry, On political front things have been still worse. There is lack of any well throught out and even more important well executed development programme for the benefit of masses. Much of it has resulted from the anxiety of the top leaders to protect their own interests first rather of the country's
The writings included in this volume have their focus on the multi-dimensional social, economic and political issues that have emerged in India recently. The volume covers areas like planning: inflation; production and distribution of essential consumer goods and their prices; urban issues; transport; tribal agriculture and identity: plantation industries; regional growth problems; privatisation pitfalls; health services; ecological disturbance; investment. snags; national educational policy and several other areas relating to education; role of middlemen; wrong side of service sector; development burden; ineffectiveness of government policies, and a host of other issues and emerging crises that contribute to the social, economic and political development in India