This book provides an account of economic development in Palanpur, a village in rural north India, based on five detailed surveys of the village over the period 1957 to 1993. These five decades have seen economic well being rise in some important respects, but stagnation and even decline in other areas. The analysis presented here focuses on the reasons behind this uneven progress. The chapters in the book tie in the background issues of the evolution of poverty and inequality and mobility over time with causal factors such as technological progress, demographic and sectoral changes, the opera ... More

This book provides an account of economic development in Palanpur, a village in rural north India, based on five detailed surveys of the village over the period 1957 to 1993. These five decades have seen economic well being rise in some important respects, but stagnation and even decline in other areas. The analysis presented here focuses on the reasons behind this uneven progress. The chapters in the book tie in the background issues of the evolution of poverty and inequality and mobility over time with causal factors such as technological progress, demographic and sectoral changes, the operation of markets, and the role of public action. Quantitative and qualitative data covering the entire population of the village yield an analysis, which illuminates questions of direct importance to researchers in a wide variety of disciplines from anthropology to sociology as well as economics and all kinds of development studies. The volume extends and updates the work done by Christopher Bliss and Nicholas Stern in Palanpur: The Economy of an Indian Village (OUP).