Development With Dignity - A Case For Full Employment

This book deals with the economic challenges thrown up by the process of interaction between democracy and economic development in India since her independence from British rule in 1947. Given that India is a very poor country with enormous diversity in terms of religion, language, and ethnicity, the gradual maturing of Indian democracy has been a remarkable achievement, almost unparalleled in political history. But this remarkable achievement has also been fatally flawed by our unforgivable failure to deal in an effective manner with mass poverty and illiteracy and various forms of religious, social and gender discrimination. These problems are inter-connected, irrespective of whether one likes to put the responsibility on the failure of planning by the state or on the failure of the market. Neither the traditional Left nor the traditional Right seems to have a coherent and satisfactory answer, or a vision of the course for the future development of India.

Arguably, the vision is worth little, unless it shows how to eliminate rapidly mass poverty and illiteracy, and overcome simultaneously various social barriers arising from caste, religion and gender prejudices.

**Contents and Sample Pages**