Told in the villagers' own words, this is a story of how issues of community were addressed by those who were exposed to a national development project. . . . An important addition to the sociology of development and modernization of South Asian societies.


Rigorous and informative enough to demand attention from specialists, while its brevity and readability will also appeal to a student readership. . . . His detailed and insightful account of micro-political processes at work . . . makes an essential contribution to understanding the hitherto much better documented events on the national political scene.