Towards a New Poverty Agenda in Asia

Social Policies and Economic Transformation

This book describes the role of social policy in the context of globalization and rapidly changing economies and societies in Asia. It compares the social policy experience of a number of countries with a focus on comparing East Asian (China, Indonesia, Vietnam), and South Asian (India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) models and experiences.

Over the last decade, particularly since the Asian financial crisis, and globalization, extension of social protection to people affected by crisis has been the main theme in national and international policy alike. In comparing the way social policy has evolved and studying its effects in various countries of Asia, the author provides a wide canvas and succeeds in bringing out similarities as well as differences in the individual experiences, while simultaneously providing explanations. His research brings together three separate streams of study in its scope-politics, sociology and economics-to analyse the ground reality of Asian experiences.