Five Decades of Economic Development and Social Change in Village India (V. Nath)

The book, Five Decades of Economic Development and Social Change in Village India, covers authors works on village India over a span of half a century. His interest in studies of village life, its economic and social structures and power relation, direction and speed of change goes back to 1945 when he wrote his first essay based on his ancestral village Jhavaria in Shahpur District (now in Pakistan), Farming Communities in Irrigated Lands of Punjab for the award of Whitbeck Scholarship later published in Journal of American Geographers in 1949. His posting with the Programme Evaluation Organization of the Planning Commission in India (1953-57), further increased his interest and knowledge about rural societies in the country. Later as Collector of Sawai Madhopur district in Rajasthan in early 1960s gave him another opportunity for in-depth studies in Rajasthan villages and make comparative studies in the Punjab. He sustained his interest in changes in village India and commissioned a resurvey of Rajasthan villages in 2001 and had plans for similar survey in the Punjab. The contents of this volume bring out his in-depth understanding of rural communities and broad perspective on development and large differences in inter-regional and intra-regional progress and speed of change. Kamla Nath, his wife who participated in some parts of these studies and has edited this book.