The book on Human Development and Sustainability: Challenges and Strategies is the outcome of the Fifth Biannual Seminar of International Consortium for Social Development—Asia Pacific (ICSDAP) held at the Department of Social Work, Visva-Bharati ‘Sriniketan’, India. It has unleashed main challenges and strategies for human development and sustainability in the Asian century. The book also critically analyzes growing inequality and neglect of local level development. There are total 28 papers divided into three sections. “Human Development and Sustainability: A Discourse,” “Sectoral Issues and Challenges, and “Strategies for Human Development.” The book will be useful for the multidisciplinary professionals and practitioners from the field of social work, social welfare, social development, education, health, and management, including policymakers. Readers will find it informative, constructive and redolent in the context of diversified emerging social issues and methodology.
Asok Kumar Sarkar, an alumnus of Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Jawaharlal Nehru University, is Professor and former Head of Department of Social Work, Visva-Bharati ‘Sriniketan’. Before joining the present position, he served in Institute of Health Management, Pachod; Department of Social Work, Assam University, Silchar; and School of Social Work, IGNOU, New Delhi in different capacities. He has authored and edited books including NGOs: The New Lexicon of Health Care (Concept); NGOs and Globalization: Developmental and Organizational Facets (Rawat), and contributed papers in many academic and peer reviewed journals. He has been serving as editor of Journal of Social Work and Social Development since 2010. His areas of research interests include maternal morbidity, reproductive health, health care, NGOs and social development.
Prasanta Kumar Ghosh is Professor and Head of the Department of Social Work, Visva-Bharati. He is a proactive social work educator, researcher and activist. He has served as Reader in the Department of Personnel Management & Industrial Relations at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and as Principal of Institute of Rural Reconstruction, Visva-Bharati. He is a Fulbright Fellow on Academic Administration. He has been a Visiting Professor at the School of Social Work, of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Campaign and as Dominican University, Chicago, USA. He has published articles in books and journals in the area of social welfare and social development at the national and international levels. He has also published a number of research papers and attended national and international seminars and conferences. Apart from his academic activities, he has been engaged in promoting rural entrepreneurship for livelihood development for the last three decades.
