In the context of Orissa, India; contributed articles.

A moral dilemma gripped Professor Gupta when he was invited by the Bangladeshi government to help restructure their agricultural sector in 1985. He noticed how the marginalized farmers were being paid poorly for their otherwise unmatched knowledge. The gross injustice of this constant imbalance led Professor Gupta to found what would turn into a resounding social and ethical movement—the Honey Bee Network—bringing together and elevating thousands of grassroots innovators. For over two decades, Professor Gupta has travelled through rural lands unearthing innovations by the ranks—from the famed Mitti Cool refrigerator to the footbridge of Meghalaya. He insists that to fight the largest and most persistent problems of the world we must eschew expensive research labs and instead, look towards ordinary folk. Innovation—that oft-flung around word—is stripped to its core in this book. Poignant and personal, Grassroots Innovation is an important treatise from a social crusader of our time.

On cover & title page: Integrated project "Making democratic institutions work"

Even in local elections, money matters¿but just how much? Drawing on multifaceted data from more than 700 races featuring 2,800 candidates, Brian Adams comprehensively investigates the role of money and the effects of campaign finance reforms at the local level. Adams covers mayoral and city council races across several election cycles, offering analysis of cities representing a range of forms of government, demographic profiles, and approaches to the regulation of campaign finance. Throughout, he evaluates claims about the costs and benefits of changes to the financing rules and also relates his findings to broader concerns about citizen participation in self-governance at the local level.

One key for success of an entrepreneur is to obtain sales (revenue) and profits as quickly as possible upon launching the venture. Entrepreneurial Marketing focuses on the essential elements of success in order to achieve these needed sales and revenues and to grow the company. The authors build a comprehensive, state-of-the-art picture of entrepreneurial marketing issues, providing major theoretical and empirical evidence that offers a clear, concise view of entrepreneurial marketing. Through an international approach that combines both theoretical and empirical knowledge of entrepreneurship and marketing, this book informs and enhances the entrepreneurs' creativity, their ability to bring innovations to the market, and their willingness to face risk that changes the world. Key components addressed include: identifying and selecting the market; determining the consumer needs cost-effectively; executing the basic elements of the marketing mix (product, price, distribution, and promotion); and competing successfully in the domestic and global markets through implementing a sound marketing plan. Numerous illustrative examples throughout the book bring the content to life. The mix of theoretical content, examples, empirical analyses, and case studies make this book an excellent resource for students, professors, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers all over the world.

The economic activity that drives growth in developing countries is heavily concentrated in cities. Catchphrases such as “metropolitan areas are the engines that pull the national economy” turn out to be fairly accurate. But the same advantages of metropolitan areas that draw investment also draw migrants who need jobs and housing, lead to demands for better infrastructure and social services, and result in increased congestion, environmental harm, and social problems. The challenges for metropolitan public finance are to capture a share of the economic growth to adequately finance new and growing expenditures and to organize governance so that services can be delivered in a cost-effective way, giving the local population a voice in fiscal decision making. At the same time, care must be taken to avoid overregulation and overtaxation, which will hamper the now quite mobile economic engine of private investment and entrepreneurial initiative. Metropolitan planning has become a reality in most large urban areas, even though the planning agencies are often ineffective in moving things forward and in linking their plans with the fiscal and financial realities of metropolitan government. A growing number of success stories in metropolitan finance and management, together with accumulated experience and proper efforts and support, could be extended to a broader array of forward-looking programs to address the growing public service needs of metropolitan-area populations. Nevertheless, sweeping metropolitan-area fiscal reforms have been few and far between; the urban policy reform agenda is still a long one; and there is a reasonable prospect that closing the gaps between what we know how to do and what is actually being done will continue to be difficult and slow. This book identifies the most important issues in metropolitan governance and finance in developing countries, describes the practice, explores the gap between practice and what theory suggests should be done, and lays out the reform paths that might be considered. Part of the solution will rest in rethinking expenditure assignments and instruments of finance. The “right” approach also will depend on the flexibility of political leaders to relinquish some control in order to find a better solution to the metropolitan finance problem.