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Richard W. Franke is a Professor of Anthropology at Montclair State University in New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1972 and has worked in Surinam, Indonesia, West Africa, the Netherlands, France, and kerala in India. With Barbara H. Chasin, he co-authored Seeds of famine: Ecological destruction and the Development Dilemma in the West African Sahek (1980). He lived in Kerala for eight months during 1986-87, carried out research for Life is a Little better: Redistribution as a development Strategy in Nadur Village, Kerala (1993). Prof. Franke and Chasin have written Kerala: radical reform ad development in an Indian State (second edition, 1994). In 1998, Franke collaborated with Thomas Isaac and Pyaralal Raghvan on democracy at Work in an Indian Industrial Cooperative: The story of Kerala Dinesh Beedi; and in 2000 Local democracy and development: People’s Campaign for Decentralized Planning in Kerala.