More than 190 participants from 20 countries attended the conference and 121 papers were presented in plenary and parallel sessions. These papers reΒ―ected the broad diversity of interests and specializations within the DSA itself and within the dierent institutions Γ academic, policy-related and practitioners Γ specializing in development issues in the UK. The papers in this Special Issue are clustered under two of the key themes which were the focus of the Conference itself. These two themes are Development in South Asia, and Environment and Development. Two additional papers reΒ―ect some of the other issues explored by the Conference. The Conference and the papers selected and published here demonstrate how the DSA contributes to and leads the debate on these development-policy related issues in the UK.
South Asia was chosen as a theme in 1997 to coincide with 50 years since Independence in India and Pakistan. The objective was to appraise development in the region during this period, and to identify key development themes for the future. The plenary presentation by Sugata Bose from Tufts University was entitled Is development history? Instruments and idioms of colonial and national development in India'. This paper assessed India's historical experience of colonial and national development, and asked whether the critique of the post-colonial state as an instrument should be extended to produce an all-encompassing rejection of the idioms of development. Five parallel sessions focused on South Asia, clustered into symposia on Perspectives on development in South Asia' and `Livelihoods and long-term change in South Asia'. These discussions ranged from macroeconomic assessments and sectoral perspectives on development in South Asia, to microscale historical analysis.
Four papers on the South Asia theme are presented in this Special Issue. Two, those by Uma Kambhampati and Jude Howell, and by T. G. Arun and F. I. Nixson, examine