Many new social and economic organizations are emerging in different parts of Asia Pacific which have skillfully adapted western capitalism to suit their own specific requirements. They have also put to effective use their own social and cultural values to get the best economic results. Japan used its heritage of associated living to overcome adversarial labour and management relations; Singapore made use of Confucial emphasis on social discipline and respect for merit to build a meritocratic society; Indonesia used its genius for eclecticism to build its own brand of social pragmatism, and then used it for economic growth; Thailand used the concept of merit in Theravada Buddhism to accelerate economic growth; and Malaysia used its own growing pragmatism to balance conflicting ethnic demands. The book examines the variety of address their respective core development issues and simultaneously register an explosive economic growth.

This book is about the poor and the constraints of social and economic relationships within which they are trapped. Such constraints have diminished their social and political capacity to be able to escape from poverty. In their case, therefore, neither the provisions of public policy nor specific development stimulus are enough. Initially, and for a limited period, what they need are socially concerned individuals and organizations to mobilise them and target them for development.;In the long run, however, their self-development can come only through their own self-involvement. As such this book concentrates on the poor, and the actual nature of their disadvantages, rather than on the abstract notions of poverty.

This study emphasizes the need for relativistic theories and differentiated social strategies which may be sensitive to the realities of different societies. The book is about a variety of efforts to help women overcome constraints imposed upon them by a network of social relationships, attitudes of men and gaps in social policy. Such attempts have consisted of an unrelenting demand for structural changes, regenerative efforts and involvement of women in participatory processes within newly created economic and political institutions. These have set in motion a gradual change in gender relationships. The book criticizes general theories which ignore racial and cultural differences and argues that gender relationships will change only when women seek their own self-development. Geeta Somjee has spent several years doing longitudinal field research in rural and urban India.