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This study of religion and society in Thailand focusses on the Hindu cultural in-fluences that exist in Thailand. It is always interesting to see how the values, ideas and spirit of Indian society work after coming into contact with other cultures. Santosh Desai identifies and studies how the Indian values and customs have been transformed in their passage from one cultural region to another and how they have been assimilated into a different society.

The late Professor Moham¬mad Habib’s writings com¬prise all that was best in the work of a whole brilliant generation of Indian his¬torians. The thinking of this generation had been moulded by the concluding phase of India’s struggle for indepen¬dence—a phase that inspired a great deal of idealism, raised the moral stature of men and created fellow-feeling even in the midst of tensions and con¬flicts of truly continental dimensions. It is this essential humanism that makes many of the historical works of the late 1920’s down to the first decade of India’s independence valuable.

Except for some well-known concepts such as Gundar Frank’s development of under¬development the actual prob¬lems of development and poli¬tical change in Latin America are still relatively unfamiliar on this side of the world. For this reason the author’s stated aim of encouraging ‘scholarly South-South exchange’ is to be applauded as well as an Indian publisher’s willingness to assist.

W.W. Rostow identified the central fact about the eco¬nomy of a traditional society to be—
… that a ceiling existed on the level of attainable out¬put per head. This ceiling resulted from the fact that the potentialities which flow from modern science and technology were either not available or not regularly and systematically applied … But in agriculture, the level of productivity was limited by the inaccessibility of modern science, its appli¬cation, and its frame of mind.

During the past one decade or so there has been a drama¬tic shift in perceptions of deve¬lopment possibilities in nation¬al economies. Moved by the substantial deterioration in the living standards of the majo¬rity of the population despite improvements at a purely aggregate level, decision¬-makers, both at international and national forums, have started concentrating on change in the structure of the economy with a view to identi¬fying the potential beneficiar¬ies of alternative development scenarios.

M.S. Rajan and Shivaji Ganguly have done a com¬mendable labour of love in bringing together writings of Sisir Gupta on wide and vari¬ed aspects of international relations in contemporary times. The volume is dedicat¬ed to the memory of Professor Sisir Gupta.