Urban and Regional Planning URP

The policy of eradication of poverty has much wider and deeper content than the policy for provision of employment. Such a policy should guarantee that a person be able to control his own fate. Programmes narrowly focusing on employment generation Issue miss this point. Women constitute the neglected, often heavily abused, half of the society. Sometimes, for the sake of nicety of discussion, mentions are made about their physical existence, but very little in terms of concrete actions emerges from these discussions.

This book is destined to become the most comprehensive book on rural poverty in Bangladesh. The author reviews the methodological issues related to rural poverty and makes out a strong case for consistency and uniformity in measuring poverty. The strategies for poverty alleviation both in the public and private sectors pursued over the past twenty-five years are exhaustively and critically reviewed. Hasnat Hye's attempt at developing a theoretical framework to explain the phenomenon of mass poverty is interesting and should invite wider discussion.

The twenty stories in this anthology have been written over a period of almost fifty years and include stories about the partition of 1947 and the liberation war of 1971. Some of the best-known writers of Bangladesh are included in this volume: Shaukat Osman, Hasan Azizul Huq, Selina Hossain, Rizia Rahman. Many of the writers have won national and international awards for their work. Together, the stories provide an introduction to the genre as well as a glimpse into the social, political, and cultural life of Bangladesh.

There are 50 million children not attending primary school in South Asia. Another 40 per cent drop out of school every year. Yet, despite the fact that South Asia has emerged as the most illiterate region in the world, universal primary education for all in the next five years is not a utopian vision but an achievable reality. Police-makers not only can, but must, act now to end the region's shameful neglect of basic education. This is the central message that emerges from the 1998 Report on Human Development in South Asia.