Close Encounters of Another Kind: Women and Development Economics

Close Encounters of Another Kind: Women and Development Economics brings together Devaki Jain’s essays which engage with public policy, development economics and women. In the 1970s and 1980s, as a fallout of the First World Conference of Women, held in Mexico in 1975, then the Women’s Decade (1975–85), followed by the Second World Conference in 1985 in Nairobi, governments energized their bureaucracies to address women’s inclusion in development programmes. Thereby began the work of gendering development, and as a result of challenging the existing ideas, projects related to the design of development policies and programmes. However, most of these efforts were couched in the knowledge and experience of the global North since the efforts were largely led by the Northern intellectual community. In this volume therefore, Professor Jain highlights the ways in which the design of public policy has ignored the lived experience of what was being offered in India as development.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Publisher’s Acknowledgements Introduction: Development Is Not Benign Letting the Worm Turn: A Comment on Innovative Poverty Alleviation Development Theory and Practice: Insights Emerging from Women’s Experience Gender and Poverty in India: Comment on a World Bank Country Study Healing the Wounds of Development Valuing Work: Time as a Measure Nuancing Globalisation, or Mainstreaming the Downstream, or Reforming Reform Food Battles, or Battling for Food Are We Knowledge-Proof? Development as Waste A View from the South: A Story of Intersections Women, Public Policy and the New World Order Growth, Poverty and Inequality: The Linkages and Relevance of Macro-economic Policies Walking Together: The Journey of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Women’s Movement Morals in Politics: The Gandhian Touch Exploring Economic Inequality: From Piketty through Adiga to Gandhi The New World Re-order: An Opportunity to Build a Feminist Political Economy Bibliography Bibliography of Selected Works by Devaki Jain Index

About the Author :
Devaki Jain, Honorary Fellow St Anne’s College, Oxford University, is Founder and former Director of the Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi, India. She was previously a lecturer at the University of Delhi, a founding member of Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), member of the South Commission (chaired by Julius Nyerere), and of the UN eminent persons group concerned with child soldiers. She has an honorary doctorate from the University of Westville in Durban, Republic of South Africa, and has held fellowships at Harvard and Sussex Universities. She has been a member of State Planning boards and many of the Government of India’s special committees related to gender and its inclusion.

Review :
Devaki Jain has been a pioneer in bringing to light gender inequalities and injustices in India for the past several decades. She was one of the first to highlight through her Time Use Study (included in this volume), women’s significant contributions to not just reproductive and care work in India, but to production as well. She has also worked closely with the UN system to ensure women’s rights are taken on board in policy and practice. The first volume The Journey of a Southern Feminist contains the speeches and writings of Devaki on various occasions. The present second volume contains papers of more recent origin. She broadly deals with the gender dimensions of poverty and political and social power. The papers have a Gandhian touch with as much attention to ethics and equity as to economics. The final essay in this book titled ‘The New World Re-order’ is an appropriate term to indicate the potential for creating order from disorder. In short, Devaki’s writings and speeches have dominated public and political thinking on gender issues during this century. I commend Volume II and recommend that everyone interested in gender dimensions of our life should read both Volumes I and II. Devaki Jain has been a steadfast voice in international debates, bringing to the conversations the perspectives of feminists and of the Global South, which are not only critical of mainstream but also show alternative approaches. This inspiring volume is a must-read for new generations of activists and scholars alike. I am impressed by [Devaki Jain’s] continued efforts over several decades to bring the feminism issue to the intellectual forefront. I am glad she brought out the volume because otherwise I, and several others, would not have known about these efforts. “This collection of 15 essays by Devaki Jain represents her journey as a pioneering scholar, activist and advocate of development alternatives and gender equality on the national (Indian) and international stages for over five decades.” “These volumes, easily accessible to an international audience, complement Jain’s already extensive publications and should be read and appreciated in concert …. (She) is intuitively intersectional, emphasizing the dialectic between diversity and unity.”  “These two books are remarkable contributions by a veteran feminist economist with an experience that spans the early period of India’s independence, forays into socialism and globalization and marks the unfolding of the women’s movement through these periods. These books are a must-read for all women’s studies.”