The World Bank and India's irrigation reform

The decisions to be taken on canal irrigation in India during the next five years will have repercussions well into the next century, and the World Bank's role in those decisions will be substantial. Yet the Bank's approach to improving existing canal systems and designing new ones fails to match the components of the approach with their environments. This paper suggests that in a wide range of social and physical environments the Bank's proposals are likely to give little net benefit compared with alternatives. An alternative way of thinking about irrigation improvement programmes would emphasise operational procedures and the information ‘system’.     

Exploring Social Capital Debates at the World Bank

This article explores the ways in which discussions of social capital have emerged within the World Bank, and how they interacted both with project practices and with larger debates in the institution. These debates are understood as a ‘battlefield of knowledge’, whose form and outcomes are structured but not determined by the political economy of the Bank. Understanding the debates this way has implications for research on the ways in which development discourses are produced and enacted, as well as for more specific discussions of the place of social capital in development studies. The article concludes with a reflection on implications of these debates for future research, policy, and practice.     

New BRICS Bank a Building Block of Alternative World Order

In 1990, right after the Berlin Wall fell, NPQ published our Spring edition, titled “The New World Disorder,” about the nationalistic chaos and up‐in‐theair sensibility of that fraught new historical moment. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the regime of globalization that had supplanted the Cold War world of blocs is itself coming apart at the seams. Even Henry Kissinger these days says “the world order is crumbling.” Will this New World Disorder 2.0 revert to a system of conflicting blocs, as during the Cold War, or will we be mature enough to save the interdependence of plural identities that is the foundation of a new global civilization? In this section our contributors offer their perspectives on what the future holds.     

Disjunction between policy research and practice: Social benefit-cost analysis and investment policy at the World Bank

One often comes upon cases where, even allowing for long lags, policy-makers do not utilize readily available policy research. The gap between policy research and practice has important consequences, both for researchers and for practitioners. In an effort to clarify the causes of the phenomenon, this paper discusses a specific experience: social benefit-cost analysis for investment choice in the World Bank. The analysis may be useful both to the social scientists who do policy research and to the practitioners who might make more use of it.     

Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania

Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: underdevelopment and an uncaptured peasantry Goran Hyden London: Heinemann. 1980. 270pp. £7.50. £3.50 pb     

The revenue implications of the Uganda and Tanzania plans 1

A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830–1920. By Hugh Tinker for the Institute of Race Relations, London, New York, Bombay: Oxford University Press. 1974. Pp. xvi + 432, maps, diagrams and illustrations. £5.75.

Modernization in South‐East Asia. Edited by Hans‐Dieter Evers. Singapore and Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Pp. xix + 249. £7–25.

Protest Movements in Rural Java. By Sartono Kartodirdjo. London, New York, Singapore, etc.: Oxford University Press, 1973. Pp. xv + 229, maps, price not indicated.

Economic Prospects of Bangladesh. By Austin Robinson. London: Overseas Development Institute Ltd., 1973. Pp. vii + 59: £1.50.

Disaster in Bangladesh: Health Crises in a Developing Nation. Edited by Lincoln C. Chen. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. Pp. xxviii + 290, figures, tables, glossary, index; £4.25 (cloth); £2.70 (paper).

Socialisms and Development. By Rene Dumont with Marcel Mazoyer. London, Andre Deutsch, 1973. Pp. 352. £3.50.

Economic Growth and Development in West Malaysia, 1947–1970. By David Lim. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. Pp. xvi + 346. £9.95.

Land and Family in Pisticci. By J. Davis. London: The Athlone Press, and New York: Humanities Press, 1973. Pp. x + 200, maps, diagrams. £3–50.

The Green Revolution in West Pakistan: Implications of Technological Change. By Leslie Nulty. New York: Praeger and London: Pall Mall, 1972. Pp. xxi + 150. £5.25.

Taxing a Peasant Society: The Example of Graduated Taxes in East Africa. By Kenneth Davey. London: Charles Knight and Co. Ltd., 1974. Pp. 226. £2.50.

Regional Development Banks: The Asian, African and Inter‐American Development Banks. By John White. New York: Praeger and London: Pall Mall, 1972. Pp. vii + 204. £5.25.

Human Fertility in India: social components and policy perspectives, by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1974. Pp. ix + 132. $6.00 and £3.00.     

关于世界格局演变趋势与“无极化”世界的思考与探讨

冷战结束后，美国成为世界上唯一的超级大国，作为唯一的一个“极”，它在国际社会的权势处于顶点。但阿富汗战争余烬未冷，伊拉克战争又使美国颜面扫地，突如其来的金融风暴更使美国陷入了尴尬的境地。随着各国政治、经济、军事、科技力量的不断变化，作为一个“极”的美国似乎正逐渐失去曾经拥有的统治力。而俄罗斯、中国以及印度等新兴大国却成为潜在的“极”，再加上欧洲、日本等旧有大国，这一格局既非单极支配，亦非多极结构，是否预示着另一种“极”时代格局的到来？     

Income portfolios in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania: Choices and constraints

The article analyses the different income portfolios of households using survey data from rural Ethiopia and rural Tanzania. It suggests that the different portfolios held by households cannot be explained by their behaviour towards risk as is usually suggested. It is better explained by differences in ability, location, and in access to credit. A logit analysis of households with different income portfolios, controlling for the effects of location, suggests that entry into high‐return activities is determined by investment in particular skills or by access to capital.     

Decentralization in Tanzania: Design and Application in Planning Decisions

Every state copes with the question of which level of government should bear responsibility for social services such as health care and education. Tanzania is no exception. The current government infrastructure of Tanzania is based on the principle of Decentralization by Devolution (DbyD) and can be seen as a reaction to previous structures based on centralized de-concentration. This article reviews the decentralization as designed in the DbyD policy and its application in planning decisions by assessing the involvement of local communities in decision making, based on a case study in two primary facilities. The conclusion is that even though policy states a strong decentralized government, in reality central preferences dominate the decision-making. Wishes expressed in local plans are ignored in the planning procedure. The article identifies the factors that contribute to this central influence and concludes with reviewing the value of decentralization policy in Tanzania and other developing countries.     

Critical Social Theory and the Contemporary World

The far-reaching historical transformations of recent decades, including the decline of the Keynesian/Fordist organization of polity and economy in the West, the collapse of party-state command economies in the East, and the emergence of a neo-liberal capitalist global order, suggest that contemporary critical theory must be centrally concerned with historical dynamics and large-scale structural changes. The paper argues that these broad developments can best be apprehended by a theory premised on the Marxian theory of capital, but only if that category is fundamentally reconceptualized in ways that distinguish it from its usage in traditional Marxist interpretations.