The north-west region–Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and the Union Territory of Chandigarh has undergone considerable change in the social, economic and political spheres due to the ongoing development processes during the last two decades of twentieth century. The change has been both positive and negative. There are varying explanations but very few definitive answers to what had happened and why it happened. It is widely held that perhaps the failure of development planning and the policy accounted for the emergence of disparities between the regions, social classes, and social segments resulting in resurgence of caste and ethnic strife, intensification of ethnic conflicts, increase in the gap between social expectations and the abilities of the social system to meet them. The ever rising pressure of market forces has made the academic community to rethink and redefine development and its goals. The book maintains that social advancement is not a necessary condition of economic development. But the latter itself seems to be the function of development policy of the State than of social advancement. The economic development itself has limitations as it may or may not lead to human development. The human development may take place independent of economic development, depending once again on the development policies of the state. It is therefore stressed that economic development also does not necessarily lead to social development. The articles included in the book reveal that economic development is likely to generate trends of social change more than social transformation.
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