The term 'structural adjustment' has been associated with rioting as angry and hungry masses protest food price increases due to subsidy cuts or due to other structural adjustment conditions prescribed by the IMF and the World Bank. Structural adjustment, and the neo-liberal paradigm that underlies it, is now the dominant economics paradigm practised by developing countries. The main purpose of the book is to rely on evidence and to go beyond rhetoric, ideology and anecdotes in assessing structural adjustment in Pakistan and the developing world more generally to examine how reform can be combined with pragmatism and social justice.
