Synopsis Throughout the world, almost all poor people live in rural areas and they depend mainly on agriculture and allied activities for their livelihood and overall well-being. So, rural development is the utmost need for improvement of their living standard. Rural development refers to the structural change in the socio-economic situation to achieve improved living standard of low income population residing in rural areas and making the process of their development self-sustaining. Therefore, rural development talks about the improvement of living standard of rural masses. Rural areas are plagued with poverty, with the most vulnerable sectors of the population being women, children and the elderly. As rural development is essential for the improvement of quality of life among the rural people, utmost care should be taken for improvement of living standard of the rural masses through concerted efforts in achieving a balanced rural development. An attempt has been made in this book to study different issues and challenges of rural development and discuss the efforts being made in different countries towards achieving sustainable and balanced rural development. With this background, the book tries to focus on how the living standard of rural masses through Public Private Partnership, Community Participation, agrarian reforms etc., can be improved. The experiences of rural development through various sectors in cross-country perspective have also been focused in this book to make it meaningful.