This volume advocates a pro-poor growth strategy where the poor also participate directly as subjects, in development. The contributors to this volume present six case studies from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. Together they show how new social movements and organisations of the poor are converging with efforts to decentralise and share power at a local level. This volume breaks new ground by investigating, in depth, the three important agendas of governance, decentralisation/devolution, and poverty eradication, and by highlighting how they can be coordinated to fashion a genuinely pro-poor macro-micro development strategy.