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The book is the outcome of an international seminar held by the Asiatic Society on the topic, biological and cultural diversity in Asia and the developmental consequences. Scholars from different parts of the world and India contributed papers for this volume. The UNESCO convention concerning the protection of world’s cultural and natural heritage has provided a new approach to the issue of sustainable development. India has already involved itself in the international efforts of fostering local, national and global strategies for the protection of biological and cultural diversity and development. There are important papers in this volume on diversity and development beginning with the prehistoric, ancient and the present-day problems and solutions. Tribal, rural and urban situations of India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh are deliberated. All the papers in this volume are topical, urgent and on current issues in the chosen perspective. This volume will be useful to scholars and researchers in the field of diversity and sustainable development.

Contents: Foreword. Introduction. 1. The relevance of the past: from Sir William Jones to Amartya Sen/K. Paddayya. 2. Indian prehistory viewed against recent theories of dispersal of man/D.K. Bhattacharya. 3. Fishing communities in South and South-East Asia/Himanshu Prabha Ray. 4. Urban and non-urban culture levels revealed by the archaeological remains of Varanasi/Vidula Jayaswal. 5. Gene differentiation among Karnataka populations/M.R. Gangadhar and S.C. Jai Prabhakar. 6. Colonial impact on ecological and social diversity in India and its consequences/Subhadra Mitra Channa. 7. Sowing the seeds of diversity: food sovereignty and globalisation in India/Miriam Sharma and Elizabeth Louis. 8. Language maintenance and language shift: a case of the Jewish community in the west and the east/Pratibha Bhattacharya. 9. The oraon cycle of time: an anthropological study of diversities through Birth practices/Abhik Ghosh. 10. Redefining Khasi boundaries: absorption of globalising tendencies within Khasi culture/Shamila Ghosh. 11. Local self-Government (LSG) in Nagaland: a study of organisational diversity among the Nagas/Jonali Devi. 12. Urban factor in culture of a traditional community/Shabeena Yasmin Saikia. 13. Ethnic divide and the imperatives of development in North-East India/Kamal K. Misra. 14. Critical nutritional stress among adult tribal populations of West Bengal and Orissa, India/Kaushik Bose and Samiran Bisai. 15. Human diversity and some epidemiological studies/R.P. Srivastava. 16. Greying of populations and feminisation of ageing: challenges faced by ageing women/Amrita Bagga. 17. Constructing a non-Brahmin culture: assessing the efforts of E.V. Ramasami/Debi Chatterjee. 18. Immigrants and cultural diversity: Indian urban context/Sumita Chaudhuri. 19. Social anthropological requisites of India’s development: a case approach/Asoke Basu. 20. Diversity and development in Bangladesh: current status and future tasks/Dalem Ch. Barman. 21. The present bio-diversity and natural phenomenon in North-Eastern region of Bangladesh/Abdul Awwal Biswas. 22. Ethnic, social and cultural diversities of Bhutan a Himalayan State of South Asia/Sekh Rahim Mondal. 23. Struggling identities: Vanniyalettto (Vedda) of Sri Lanka/David Bluendell.