About the Institute Journal

When Malcolm Adiseshiah founded the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) in 1971, one of his earliest activities was to start a monthly periodical which he named Bulletin: Madras Development Seminar Series. Its purpose was to bring the paper presented and discussed at the monthly seminar of the Institute to the attention of the wider public. Apart from the seminar paper, the Bulletin carried a long editorial section written by Adiseshiah himself on economic and development issues relating to Tamil Nadu and India with references to the changing profiles of the international economy as well. Soon the periodical came to be commonly referred to as the MIDS Bulletin. The wide coverage of current events and the range of articles in the Bulletin attracted the attention of scholars as well as the general public.

Malcolm Adiseshiah was the editor and the main contributor of the Bulletin. He faithfully brought out the periodical, month after month for twenty-four years. When he turned 84 in April 1994, he admitted that he was finding it difficult to carry the burden, but was keen that a Journal on developmental issues be continued as an activity of the Institute. He persuaded one of his colleagues in the Institute to accept responsibility as the editor of a new journal and announced in the June 1994 issue of the Bulletin that after it ceased publication in June 1995, a new journal would take its place.

Malcolm Adiseshiah passed away in November 1994. But as was his practice, he had penned what turned out to be his last editorial and compiled the material for the December 1994 issue which appeared as the final issue of the Bulletin. The new journal Review of Development and Change (RDC) began publication in 1996, is the successor to the Bulletin.

RDC, a peer-reviewed journal, aims to examine diverse aspects of the changes taking place in economy, polity and society in the Global South as a whole and in South Asia predominantly. The journal recognises that Development crosses disciplinary boundaries, and hence encourages multidisciplinary theoretical and applied scholarship on problems of development that are conceptually, methodologically and empirically rigorous, and lucidly communicated. The journal’s areas of focus are agriculture, environment, industry, urbanization, human development, poverty and inequality amongst others.