About the Book
Regional development in India has been particularly uneven. The present book is a critique of capitalist development, trying to explore these inequalities in the state of Odisha. This state is a land of odd contradictions. Abundant in natural resources, Odisha has attracted the powerful capitalist corporations from around the world on one hand and on the other hand the state has become synonymous with staggering levels of poverty, underemployment, landlessness, malnutrition, low life expectancy and deprivation. By virtue of favourable rainfall, the net per capita food availability has remained above national average, yet poverty and underdevelopment has persisted for years. The state machinery seems to have failed on the human development front.
What led to such an unfortunate state of affairs? This question is explored in the book. Exploitation of the resources and the poor; misfired public provisioning; lopsided development and lack of an egalitarian social structure; non-success of the trickle-down effect; repeated natural hazards such as droughts, floods and cyclones; and forced displacement are some of the contributing factors to the hunger, deprivation and exclusion. The worst affected are the landless, marginalized and socially excluded communities. This book suggests land redistribution along with other agrarian reforms to fight the disparities and for the betterment of the socially disadvantaged groups.
With a multidisciplinary approach and extensive collection of facts and figures, Hunger, Deprivation and Social Exclusion will interest not only students, teachers, and researchers of development studies but also policy makers, NGOs, national and international agencies and social activists alike.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Structure of Hunger and Deprivation in Odisha
3. Slow and Lopsided Structural Transformation and its Impacts
4. Absence of Distributive Justice: Access to Land and Related Resources in a Comparative Perspective
5. Social Exclusion: A Source of Hunger and Deprivation
6. Public Provisioning to Reduce Hunger and Deprivation
7. External Sources of Hunger and Deprivation
8. Coping with External Shocks: Displacement in the Name of Development
9. Summary and Conclusion
About the Author / Editor
R.K. Kumbhar obtained his M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Jawaharlal Nehru University through Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He is Assistant Professor at the P.G. Department of Economics, Sambalpur University, Odisha. He has worked for various international projects in the fields of poverty, employment and social security; and authored several articles, which have appeared in reputed journals and books.
