Urban and Regional Planning URP

Over the past decade or more, Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has seized the imagination of judges, lawyers and human rights activists throughout South Asia. It has opened new avenues for access to justice, to legal remedies and catalysed innovative responses for protection of basic human rights, including economic and social rights.

IRBD reports represent a pioneering research initiative undertaken by the Centre for Policy Dialogue and gives an independent analysis of Bangladesh's development efforts. CPD's first volume on Experiences with Economic Reform: A Review of Bangladesh's Development 1995 was very well received and has been extensively used by politicians, experts, and policy makers to the point where it has by now become an essential reference point as well as a source of influence on public opinion.

Providing microcredit to the poor has become an important antipoverty scheme in many countries. Microcredit helps the poor become self-employed and thus generates income and reduces poverty. In Bangladesh, these programs reach about five million poor households. But microcredit programs are just one of many ways of reducing poverty. Are these programs cost-effective? This book addresses the question, drawing on the experience of the well-known microcredit programs of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, the Rural Development-12 project, and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee.

In this book of three essays (emerging from lectures at BRAC University and Bangladesh Economic Association), Professor Nurul Islam examines the opportunities as well as risks Bangladesh faces in foreign trade, investment and labour export, first in the context of economic globalization and then in the regional context, in forging mutually beneficial economic relations with India. The book also contains an empirical analysis of Bangladesh's international image-in respect of economic performance and state of governance- with a significant bearing on her development prospects.