Long neglected in development analysis, the socio-cultural dimensions of development have begun to receive increasing attention in recent years. We come across in the literature much reiterations on the importance of non economic dimensions of development, especially its socio-cultural dimensions. What we rarely come across are the details of linkages between socio-cultural factors and the process of development, which precisely is what this book seeks to offer.
Based on the selected papers presented at a seminar, the book focuses on the following themes: social nature of deve lopment, Linkages between population and development, social structure and development, and cultural development. The analysis of social nature of develop. ment brings in sharp focus the limitations. of the prevailing economic concept of development and attempts to scrutinize its conceptual foundations to broaden its concerns from narrowly economic to broadly social. The section on population and development explores the interrelations between population variables and development indicators, particularly in the Indian context.
Social Structural constraints on development, structural sources of uneven development and disparities distribution of in the development benefits, structural roots of poverty and its perpetuation, structural subversion of development legislation, and structural factors affecting state sponsored development and radical mobilization for development are some of the aspects of linkages between social structure and development which have been analyzed in the last section
Such are the issues of contemporary concern discussed in this volume.