Towards an integerated society

Certain aspects of our problems of poverty and economic and social development have long been of concern to me. Both before and since Independence, specially during the years of intimate participation in India's national planning, they have been constantly in my mind. Therefore, as occasions arose outside work on the Five Year Plans in which I was immersed, I found myself turning to these topics. This is how several of the papers brought together in this book came to be written.

The thirty-four papers which are here presented fall into three groups: Rural Institutions and Problems, Plan ning and Plan Implementation, and Social Policy. Though these are broad descriptions, the scope of the papers is more limited. In the main, those aspects have been discussed which seemed to me to need special emphasis. In a collec tion of this nature, certain thoughts will recur from time to time, both because they bear on the argument and because they have become part of one's view of life and society.

Separate pieces on the range of themes covered in this volume have a certain limitation to which attention should be drawn. They are extensive rather than intensive in treat ment, and they differ in their purpose from systematic and detailed study in depth devoted to specific topics. However, they are closely related and form part of a larger design of change and of a concept of social democracy deriving from the background and conditions of India. They point to significant questions which merit closer investigation and call for social action. They also reflect changes in mood and circumstance, which are as much a part of the processes of economic and social development, as they are of the way in which each of us reacts towards events in which, in howso ever small a measure, we are privileged to participate.