Contents: Preface and acknowledgements. Introductory remarks: why India will fail to meet the Millennium development goals/Meghnad Desai. I. Globalization and the millennium development goals: 1. Globalization and the millennium development goals: negotiating the challenge/Manmohan Agarwal and Amit Shovon Ray. 2. Africa: growth and social progress/Manmohan Agarwal and Prabhu Prasad Mishra. 3. Developing an African growth plan/Ross Herbert. II. Economic and social consequences of globalization: 4. World economic performance and social progress/Manmohan Agarwal. 5. Agricultural trade liberalization in India: a critical review/G.S. Bhalla. 6. Globalization and informal sector employment: the case of India's unorganized manufacturing/G.K. Chadha. 7. Globalization and auto component SMEs in India/Neelam Singh. III. Health: 8. Access to new drugs in India: implications of TRIPS/Amit Shovon Ray and Manashi Chakravorty. 9. Treating AIDS: intellectual property, generic production and the challenge of stable supply/Ken Shadlen. 10. Reproductive health and the MDGs: rhetoric and reality/Ernestina Coast. IV. Education: 11. What is universal primary education? Literacy, citizenship and critical thinking/Eva-Maria Nag. 12. Market-driven higher education/Alok Rai.

"Globalization is a controversial subject. While some argue that it promotes economic growth that translates into social progress, others believe that it is detrimental to social advancement. There is a broad consensus in the international community that all states should be urged to improve their social conditions, a position most strongly articulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) declaration of the United Nations.

Globalization and the Millennium Development Goals brings together conceptual and empirical insights in the interaction of globalization and the social sectors, focusing especially on the MDGs. Some of the papers included here explicitly look at the Indian experience with social progress in the context of globalization. The volume, with introductory remarks by Meghnad Desai, reflects the multifarious views regarding the interplay between economic development and social progress and attempts to answer the question: can globalization have a human face?" (jacket)