Deliberations of a workshop organized by the Centre for Administrative Studies, University of Dacca.

With a focus on colonial Bengal, this book demonstrates how the dynamics of agrarian prosperity or decline, communal conflicts, poverty and famine can only be properly understood from an ecological perspective as well as discussions of state's coercion and popular resistance, market forces and dependency, or contested cultures and consciousness.

This book, based on empirical data collected through census, interview-cum-observations including the case studies from a Bangladesh village, seeks to explore the survival characteristics of the poor. A multiple deprivations approach to poverty provides the study's conceptual framework. An uncertain as well as a very low income forced the poor day labourers, petty traders, artisans, small farmers, to adopt a variety of improvising mechanisms, viz., irregular carbohydrate diet, substandard housing and total neglect of health and education needs. Such a precarious living eroded the traditional family and kinship norms making certain categories of people particularly vulnerable. A perpetual dependence on neighbours and patrons, and alienation from the socio-political affairs of the community relegated them to a low social status. The poor, by and large, had low self-perception and aspiration, and were overwhelmingly religious and fatalistic in outlook; yet many did not resign to fate and endeavoured to take all possible measures to adust to multifarious depriving situations, thus negating the culture of poverty concept. The study outlines the policy implications at the end. An unequal social structure is identified as a basic malaise that thwarts any attempt at social development. Land and other asset redistribution is suggested as a first planned measure towards alleviation of mass poverty.

This book provides an overview of the emergence of geography as a discipline in Bangladesh and the contributions made by local geographers towards the development of the country. It explores problems associated with population growth and poverty, landlessness and food security, land use and natural resource management, urbanism, climate change, disaster management and human health. The volume shows how research and the study of geography in the ‘periphery’ can contribute in achieving progress in countries like Bangladesh and help them prepare against imminent disasters, ecological, social, economic shocks and uncertainties. This book will be useful to students and researchers of geography, environment studies, disaster management, development studies, geoinformatics, geology, demography, sociology and South Asian studies with a particular focus on Bangladesh. It will also interest various policy makers and NGO professionals working in these and related fields.

More than forty authors in six countries representing the major regions of the world offer a truly global perspective on the changing nature of the practice and theory of community development.

In Criminal Sentencing in Bangladesh, Muhammad Mahbubur Rahman critically examines the sentencing policies of Bangladesh and demonstrates that the country’s sentencing policies are not only yet to be developed in a coherent manner and shaped with an appropriate and contextual balance, but also remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution. The author forcefully argues that the conception of ‘sentencing policies’ cannot and should not always be confined exclusively to institutional understandings. The typical realities of post-colonial societies call for rethinking the traditional judiciary-centred understanding of what is meant by criminal sentences. This book thus raises the question for theoretical sentencing scholarship whether the prevailing judiciary-centred understanding of sentencing should be rethought.

As the first Bengalee Archbishop of South Asia, Theotonius Amal Ganguly, CSC, made a remarkable contribution in the expansion of Christian missionary activity in Bengal through all the three political regimes that Bangladesh went through. In the four hundred years of the history of the Catholic Church in Bangladesh, his appointment as the archbishop not only highlights his role in serving the Catholic Church, but also the importance of Catholic missionary activities in Bangladesh. To explore the history of Protestant missionary activities during the last century, research was carried out and books were published. These scholarly activities left a noticeable gap in the area of the history of the Catholic Church in Bangladesh. This book is a bold attempt to fill in that gap, which led to serious research culminating in the publication of this book. What makes this book remarkable and outstanding is the use of unused sources to reconstruct the life and times of Archbishop Theotonius Amal Ganguly in the sociopolitical background of Bangladesh, especially his role in the liberation war of 1971. His heroic role in the liberation war indelibly earned him a place in the mainstream history of Bangladesh.

A union list of serials commencing publication after Dec. 31, 1949.