Rural development in Asia: meetings with peasants

Rural Development in Asia is the distillation of Prof Etienne's long standing involvement with these five countries and with the problem of development. While not ignoring hard facts, Prof Etienne is more concerned with arriving at an understanding of the development process through dialogues with farmers and peasants.
Starting with a historical survey, Prof Etienne presents the salient features of each country and outlines the shifts and trends he observed on successive visits. Field studies at the farm level have been combined with a macro perspective at the national level. He observes that the five countries have on the whole made significant progress in the battle against hunger.
Now that all five countries have achieved a certain measure of success,the next stage is likely to be more difficult and will require greater efficiency, sounder management, and more imaginative policies on the part of the political elite and the bureaucracy.
Finally, Prof Etienne briefly examines some of the more fashionable theories of development and concludes that most of them are flawed being based either on sweeping generalisations or on narrow micro studies. He challenges the stereotyped responses of armchair experts who, he believes, talk about the poor instead of to them. While it is not his intention to contribute yet another theory, there is no doubt that his pragmatic conclusions have major implications for rural development throughout the Third World.