The state of housing in a country has a direct impact on the level of public health, on the crime rate, and on many other social problems of importance. It also has an indirect effect on labor productivity in the economy through the general morale of workers. Practically all countries today are facing housing problems in varying degrees, especially in urban areas. For an underdeveloped country, its ability to provide adequate housing in urban areas is a vital prerequisite for successful industrialization. In countries which are relatively well developed, the rising income level of the population creates a constantly increasing demand for better dwellings.

Rapid growth in the size and militancy of trade union movements has been a common development in the newly independent states of Asia since the end of colonial rule less than two decades ago. In these states, and in the more recently independent African states as well, government employees frequently constitute one of the principal groups of organized workers. Public servants' right of association and right to strike or demonstrate have been among the insistent questions confronting the governments of the new states.

In the areas of Asia formerly under British rule, public servants enjoy the right to form trade unions with some restrictions and, except in Pakistan, trade unionism in the public service has expanded considerably. In India, government employees other than industrial workers are allowed to organize subject to restrictions limiting membership or leadership in their trade unions to public servants and prohibiting political activity by the unions.

The Indian National Congress came into being as an organization of the new educated, professional and commercial classes which had developed in India during the course of the nineteenth century. Its early leadership consisted of men steeped in British liberal thought who endeavored to learn the British art of governing and to benefit from the blessings of the British constitution. They demanded representation in the legislative councils, a greater share for Indians in the civil service, protection for Indian industries and reduction in unproductive public expenditure. Since the franchise was very restricted, it was not necessary for the aspirants to membership of legislatures to build a mass electoral organization. Their social base remained relatively small. Apart from holding annual sessions and passing resolutions on a variety of public issues, the Congress had no program, except in Bengal during the anti-partition agitation, which required for its implementation a well-developed party organization with a large membership, a body of full-time functionaries, financial resources and agencies to direct and coordinate its activities.

“For forty years,” Sun Yat-sen said in March 1925 in the Tsungli's Will, “I have devoted myself to the cause of the people's revolution with but one end in view, the elevation of China to a position of freedom and equality among the nation.” “But,” he lamented, “the work of the Revolution is not yet done.” For forty years since, Chiang Kai-shek has been at the very center of the Chinese political limelight. During half of this period, from 1928 to 1949, he was to a remarkable degree China itself. But like Sun, he has also failed to consummate the Kuomintang movement and the work of the revolution.

One of the functions of higher educational systems everywhere has been the recruitment of an elite; for until the mass-education experiments of the twentieth century, highly educated members of major historical societies have been the chosen few. Similarly, the content of higher education has formed a culture the monopoly of which has served to set the highly educated apart from the common man. Hence the system of higher education in most societies forms a well-recognized institutional avenue of approach, not only to a society's high literary culture, but to prestige and power as well. These important properties of higher educational systems suggest that the content of higher education may have a social utility for the educated elite quite apart from its informational value. In this paper we examine the relationship between the college curriculum and the social reform activities of the educated elite of one Indian province, Bombay, in the late nineteenth century.

The Philippine claim to the territory of North Borneo, or as it is now called, Sabah, is not of recent origin. Rather it is based on an older claim to the area by the Sultans of Sulu. But the Sulu claim itself is suspect. A look at the background and an analysis of the status of North Borneo is therefore essential to understanding the nature of the dispute.

In January 1878 Sultan Mohammed Jamalul Alam, granted a portion of North Borneo, which he claimed, to an international syndicate headed by Alfred Dent, a London businessman, and the Austrian Baron Gustav von Overbeck. A few weeks before this grant was made, in December 1877, the Sultan of Brunei had ceded North Borneo, including the whole of the area claimed by Sulu, to von Overbeck and Dent.

When students of Japanese literary history view the latter part of the Tokugawa period, two developments stand out. First, Edo replaced Kyoto and Osaka as the center of cultural activity. Second, a baffling variety of forms of prose fiction arose. The former stemmed largely from the policies of Yoshimune, the eighth Tokugawa shogun. Although his suppression of “pernicious literature” had a baneful effect on publishing in Kyoto and Osaka, it indirectly improved the competitive position of Edo booksellers. During Yoshimune's reign, also, the city of Edo underwent enormous population growth. Many hatamoto and samurai were forced to resettle in Edo, where they lived on rice stipends rather than on the direct produce of their land. Bureaucracy expanded. Samurai turned from the rigors of rural life to polite urban pursuits. Need for additional services led to a growth in the number of merchants. Likewise, Yoshimune's personal interest in mathematics, science, and even Western learning resulted in the import of books and ideas from the outside world, particularly China. Proscriptions against foreign learning became less rigid.