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Natural Resource Economics: Theory and Application in India, Edited by John M. Kerr, Dinesh K. Marothia, Katar Singh, C. Ramasamy and William R. Bentley, Oxford & IBH Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1997. Pp. xxxvi+636.
Sustainable development and use of natural resources have come to occupy the central stage in the planning process of many developing countries. Underlying socio-economic and political nexus across space and time makes it imperative to adapt and apply methodologies to internalise the natural resource-related concerns in countries like India rather than importing the experiences from developing world for direct application. Ironically, the expertise in natural resource economics, though expanding in recent times, remains inadequate to match with the emerging challenges. Encouragingly, more thrust towards such newer areas of concern is emphasised as evidence in the restructuring of the curricula of agricultural education in the national system, which is currently underway.
The book under review is a pro-active response from a group of researchers with rich natural resource expertise who have visualised the emerging demand from both academic and research-based social science community in natural resource economics. More importantly, the editors of the book have brought together a core group of 34 natural resource economists, mostly from India and drawn natural resource management related experiences and examples from different regions, again mostly from India.
The book has five sections dealing with introduction, concepts. research methods. applications and conclusions. Each section is divided into several themes related to environmental and natural resource management and each theme is contributed by different authors. Each theme area is covered under several sub-themes. besides having a set of discussion questions along with related references for further reading. The format of the book, coverage of the...