Exploring the social frontier

This Festschrift, in the honour of Professor R.S. Gautam, brings together essays as diverse as state of economy, social sector, governance and political frontier. Despite variations, the common string that binds the various presentations is the understanding on developments taking place in the economy, polity and society in the country. The book traces the broad trends emanating in grassroots governance, direction of economic changes and the political frontier of the country, especially social justice and marginalised sections of the society. It has three parts. The first part contains a biographical sketch, painstakingly reconstructed in a manner of a social anthropologist by one of the editors of the volume. This is followed by a brief introduction of MPISSR that traces the development of institution created by Professor Gautam. The second part is comprised of essays on issues like grassroots governance and emerging leadership in rural India, social capital and equity, health and education, performance of economy and development, political frontier, social justice and corruption. The last part is an encomium to Professor Gautam from friends, colleagues and students. Written by anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, economists and experts on health, education and demography, this volume will be of interest to all social scientists, irrespective of their discipline.