Reforms, rural development and the human face

There has always been an on-going debate on the necessity
or otherwise of the State Sector as an entrepreneur and as a welfare-
provisioning agency responsible for ensuring adequate availability
and equitable distribution of basic social-public goods, services and
utilities, of housing and shelter, of general and technical education,
or primary and specialized healthcare, of sanitation and hygiene, of
roads and transport, of safe drinking water, of irrigation, of power,
and the like, all of which go as crucial inputs into defining, variously,
the general living conditions, physical quality of life, human
development, and similar other indicators and indexes of
development as perceived under the new paradigm.
The winning view in this debate has been the one favouring
the need for curtailing the State/Public Sector's role and replacing
it by the liberalized Market-Governed regime as a necessary pre-
condition for development as now perceived, especially in the Third
World countries. This alternative is being prescribed and peddled,
and accepted too, as a panacea for all their socio-economic maladies.
This book brings together contributions of eminent thinkers,
scholars and practitioners from all over the country, who have,
through their analytical deliberations, amply and ably elaborated
upon the various sub-scenarios and facets of India's experience in
the pre and post-reform period and generated an evaluative profile
and perspective which, expectedly, would be helpful and useful for
academics, administrators and activists alike in their respective
domains of concern pertaining to reforms, rural development, social
and human development.