ABSTRACT
This chapter concentrates on inertia in relation to models of development and some concrete examples of development experiences. The idea of development is one of the oldest and most powerful Western ideas. The inertia connected with the understanding of development as growth toward modernization must be one of the strongest examples of almost irresistible inertia, because it is welded into the core structure of societies themselves. According to the indicators of human development employed by the United Nations, India maintains a low rank in human development. Whereas in India power was transferred from the English in a slow process of bargaining to a dominant coalition who subscribed at least in principle to the same liberal democratic ideals as the colonial masters, the situation in China was quite different. Strategic inertia in India and Taiwan has thus been less constraining than in China.
