The term social development has come to acquire a very important and new salience in the literature and practice of development. In India visionaries, social reformers and leaders of India’s independence movement propounded a wider concept of social development. This encyclopaedia analyses social development in India with a macroperspective, in relation to programmes initiated under the Five Year Plans. It examines Rural Development, Population and Family Planning; Poverty Alleviation; Poverty Monitoring of India; Women and Child Development; Globalisation and Women’s Economic Advancement; Literacy and Education and Ecology; Environment and Sustainable Development