Introduction: Capital and labour transformations in shaping rural development in India / Elisabetta Basile and Ishita Mukhopadhyay -- Identifying livelihoods in rural India / Ishita Mukhopadhyay -- The institutional embeddedness of Indian rural capitalism / Elisabetta Basile -- Social capital and poverty reduction strategies : the case of rural India / Claudio Cecchi, Luca Molinas, and Fabio Sabatini -- An overview of Indian microfinance / Shirsendu Mukherjee and Sukanta Bhattacharya -- Income-based estimates vs. consumption-based estimates of poverty : evidence from rural Tamil Nadu after liberalization / Marco Cavalcante -- Occupational diversification of the rural workers : some results from field surveys in West Bengal / Sankar K. Bhaumik -- Literacy and externalities in human development / Rabindranath Mukhopadhyay and Sudeshna Ghosh -- The social context of politics in rural West Bengal (1947-92) / Mario Prayer -- Agrarian expansion under colonial rule and its impact on a tribal economy / Sanjukta Das Gupta -- Acting on institutions to preserve agricultural biodiversity : the Syngenta controversy in Chhattisgarh / Christine Lutringer -- The conflicting opinions of the colonial bureaucracy over the Paraiyans right over 'waste' in late 19th century Tamil Nadu / Raj Sekhar Basu -- Appendix 1. Socio-economic indicators of rural India.