David Lewis writes on Bangladesh. Politics, Economy and Civil Society

David Lewis, Professor of social policy and development at the London School of Economics & Political Science, has written a book on Bangladeshi society with a new perspective. The book entitled ”Bangladesh. Politics, Economy and Civil Society” will be published in December 2011 by Cambridge University Press in UK.
40 years on from its independence, and as the country in South Asia to which people pay least attention, this is a good moment to take stock of the impressive transformations made since its 'basket case' status of the 1970s/1980s, and to consider the many lessons the country may now offer the rest of the world: in relation to its growing role in addressing climate change, its success with maintaining a stable democracy in a Muslim majority country, and its role as a global laboratory for a range of innovations in development and poverty reduction. More information about the book.

Professor Lewis has a Swedish connection, in being an adviser to the Bangladesh Reality Check Approach initiative set up by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the Swedish Embassy in Dhaka in 2007. The Reality Check Approach is an effort to find out how policymakers know what effect their policies are having on the people they serve.  Field teams visit and spend quality time with ordinary households living in poverty in different parts of the country, listen to their stories, and document their experiences. These are written up into an annual report for policy-makers and widely circulated (see the report from 2009). The overall objective is to listen to the voices of the poor and understand people's perspectives on primary healthcare and primary education, which are supported through two large sector programmes. It is a qualitative study which gathers grassroots experiences, opinions and insights which complements monitoring and evaluation mechanisms within these programmes. This Reality Check Approach is an opportunity to put faces and voices to the numbers as well as provision of answers to 'how' and 'why'. It will deliberately explore the range of poor people's experiences and consciously embraces context specific differences.
Prof. Lewis has written an article about the Reality Check Approach in the Guardian 10 March 2011.
Read the article entitled ”Closing the gap between development policymakers and people”.