Rural Poverty in Asia: Analysis and Policy Alternatives

Rural poverty cannot be studied in isolation. It has an historical origin and setting which simultaneously connect the present to the past and establish boundaries to what is possible in future. The history of rural poverty is, of course, part of the history of under-development and the origin of the types of rural poverty observable today forms part of what Andre Gunder Frank calls ‘the development of underdevelopment’.1 Accordingly we begin this chapter with a brief discussion of underdevelopment in an historical context.