In South Asia and beyond, human development continues to be in a state of crisis. Each successive Human Development Report (HDR) and the pervasive global failure to achieve the Millennium Development Goals are constant reminders of this crisis. An equally, and even more distressing dimension of human development is its great unevenness. Even in countries with high levels of human development it was noted that gender differences were significant. Levels of educational attainment and incomes remain significantly unequal between social groups, constituted along other categories of difference such as race, ethnicity and religion, as do levels of economic and political participation.

This book explores the unevenness of human development with respect to the question of difference. The author develops a conceptual framework that focuses on social power, whereby human development is seen as a process/es of reconstruction of the matrices of social power. The approach builds on three main components: a relational rather than an identity-centric view of difference; a transformative notion of social justice - as opposed to a distributive understanding of justice; and the notion of agency. These are applied to the South Asian reality, where important insights into structural aspects of human development can be obtained in terms of religion, gender and caste.

Written accessibly and lucidly, this book will be of interest to students and researchers in development studies, political economy, political science, public policy, governance, security studies, human rights, social and religious studies and South Asia.