Ever since the 1990s, increased emphasis is being placed on the efficacy of aid from the haves to the have-nots of the world. With a fast-paced economic growth in countries like India and China, many former aid recipients have now become aid providers.

Towards a New Poverty Agenda in Asia focuses on global trends and debates, and on the comparative narratives of national social policy experiences. The author, Arjan de Haan, is a social policy specialist with extensive knowledge of the mechanism of aid and is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University in the Netherlands.

While working for the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Haan observed the dynamics of poverty at close quarters in both China and India. His earlier publications include Reclaiming Social Policy (2007) and How The Aid Industry Works: An Introduction to International Development (2009). The key theme of Towards a New Poverty Agenda in Asia is “social policy” and the role it plays in shaping well-being, combating exclusion and responding to economic crises. It discusses social policy as an essential complement to economic policies in the perspective of cross-sectoral impact and in the perspective of political dynamics.

The book is divided into three parts. The first comprises social policy in an age of globalisation, the second studies social policy regimes in Latin America, Africa, East Asia and South Asia, and the third concludes the discussion. Analysing global social policy and practices, the book focuses on issues in Asia: it compares the economies of Asian countries such as China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and Bangladesh, but barely touching upon Pakistan. Apart from some statistical tables, Pakistan is mentioned in a few places only and not in a complimentary manner. For example, the author says:

“While in China broad-based education was critical to the phase of nation building, notably under early communist rule, Pakistan has lagged behind, and in India, a similar effective commitment did not materialise until the 1990s… In Bangladesh, NGOs played a major role in improvements since the 1980s. Arguably, the failure to address inequalities in access to education can be seen as a contributory factor to the differences in economic growth between South and East Asia, particularly under more open economic policy progress.”

And at another point he says: “Public spending on health and education is very low in Pakistan and Bangladesh, though increasing rapidly during the 1990s in the latter…. [Social] policies in South Asia evolved in a parliamentary setting (though less so in Pakistan), in parliamentary terms, and also, with significant efforts towards decentralisation.”

To a Pakistani reader, this stands out as a sore thumb. But the fault for this lies with the perennial bad governance in the country than with any bias or prejudice on the part of the author who has done justice to the subject, his research bringing together three streams of studies — politics, sociology and economics — to analyse the ground reality of Asian experiences.

Towards a New Poverty Agenda in Asia: Social Policies and Economic Transformation (DEVELOPMENT) By Arjan de Haan Sage Publications, India ISBN 978-81-321-0504-6 264pp. Indian Rs695