In a large number of countries where most of the population barely manages to earn subsistence wages, the success or failure of the economic agenda largely determines the fate of the political agenda, the quality of the democratic system and the potential for social advances. The conventional set of policy prescriptions does not ensure a positive mutual feedback between these two dimensions, the economic and the political. Such positive feedback depends vitally on productivity performance. This issue is at the core of the discussions reported in this book, which explores its variegated aspects with a view to proposing ways and means of approaching it.