Courses: Development | Sociology of Globalization | Global Studies | Women's Studies
This book advocates a context-effective approach to development which can ensure, or allow, significant changes toward economic growth with social justice. Not all developing countries are able to attract foreign investment or technical assistance; and that do, do not necessarily develop as intended because of various corporate profit, geopolitical, or humanitarian considerations. Often, extraneous policy goals or approaches disrupt the balance of development. If poverty, gender distance, and the lack of human development are the major concerns, then context-effective approaches, with pragmatic policies, can make a significant contribution to solving these problems. Even poor countries have some natural and human resources that can be harnessed effectively to create more resources to address their development needs. This book reports on such an attempt launched by the milk cooperatives of India. These cooperatives turned India into the largest milk producing country in the world. The movement touched the lives of nearly 60 million poor and supplemented their income, empowered their women without creating crisis in their family life, and brought about an incremental human development of a huge underclass through participation in grassroots institutions.
A. H. Somjee is Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He has been an Associate Fellow of Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, and a Visiting Scholar at LSE, Harvard, Cambridge, ANU, and many other universities. He has spent many years conducting field research, often at the grassroots level, understanding the complexity and actuality of development processes in Asian societies.
Geeta Somjee is Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University. She has been a Visiting Fellow at Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford, the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, Visiting Scholar at ANU, Australia and Kansai Gaidai University in Japan. She has conducted longitudinal field research in rural and urban India and is currently engaged in a comparative study of health services and nurses in Asia.
