16 Indian culture and money: challenge of a materialist world -- 17 Quest for happiness: public policies and national happiness -- 18 Synergizing development with cultural ethos -- Index
Sautar is an indigenous tribe residing mainly in West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam. Sautars belong to the Proto-Australoid racial group. Both men and women of the Sautar community are masters in archery. They are often considered a martial community by the masses. Since they are skilled fighters, they were often hired by the commoners during fights. Due to this practice, several Sautars were killed. In Bihar, Sautar is one of the major communities, forming a majority of the state's tribal population. The Sautar mostly speak Sautari, a member of the Munda language family. In Bihar, the Sautars are mostly landless. Though, some people from the tribe engage themselves in agriculture. This community has fallen prey to ignorance in the process of socialisation. The ignorance of the Sautar community developed gradually when most of their people were converted to Christianity. Some also became followers of Chauvinism. Due to this religious conversion, their original beliefs and culture got destroyed. In the cultural structure of India, the cultural identity and values of Sautars were ignored. This book is an attempt by the author to present the few aspects and facts behind the problems being faced by this community.
While development has been the foremost agenda before successive governments in India, it has been viewed narrowly – from the perspective of economic development and particularly in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). This book questions such an approach. It breaks from the conventional wisdom of GDP growth as being a definitive measure of the success of a country’s policies and offers an alternative development philosophy. The author contends that people’s economic and social welfare, life satisfaction, self-fulfilment and happiness should be treated as indicators of real development. The book underlines that in a successful model of development, the country’s economic policies will have to synergize with its cultural ethos and that the objective of development should be gross national happiness and well-being of the people. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of development studies, economics, public policy and administration, governance, political science and sociology, as well as to policymakers.
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