The present volume is a collection of articles on various facets of economic development, written by a select group of researchers who have specialised in respective fields. The planning of this volume was mooted in a meeting of advisory committee of the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) of the Department of Economics, Jadavpur University. Since CAS has sponsored a variety of workshops and seminars and hosted visiting fellows, the external experts of the CAS, Professor Dilip Nachane (former director, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research) and Professor Ramprasad Sengupta (formerly of Jawaharlal Nehru University) suggested that we collate important papers in two volumes to be contributed by the visitors as well as Jadavpur’s own faculty. The reason for planning two volumes is to accommodate the five thrust areas we have in the CAS, namely, International Trade, Finance, Resource and Environment, West Bengal Economy and Public Policy related to Social Sector. The idea is to produce a monograph which will help the readers with some survey papers along with some state-of-the-art research in relevant fields. The present volume Understanding Development: An Indian Perspective on Legal and Economic Policy edited by my three young but very energetic colleagues, Swapnendu Banerjee, Vivekananda Mukherjee and Sushil Halder, has a fine balance of topics covered under the last three thrust areas mentioned above. In addition, the chapters will satisfy the needs of various strata of readers—for example the survey on sharecropping would greatly help the graduate level students and researchers, while the chapters in the section of social sector will be of immense help for the policy planners as well as researchers. Similarly, the section on law and economics would acquaint the business practitioners along with government policymakers with some recent developments in this field. I must thank the efforts of the editors who spared their valuable time to make the volume useful and interesting. I have faith that the purpose of publishing this volume will be totally fulfilled and we will have increasing returns to knowledge after reading the volume.