ABSTRACT
Modern governments, particularly in developing nations, generally make national development plans for five or ten year periods. These national plans represent an effort to bring together in one place an orderly presentation of national goals that have some realistic possibility of being achieved in a given period of time. In this chapter, the author assesses the extent to which this program achieved its goals and finds more reasons for pessimism than for optimism. He observes also that the distribution of income is even more distorted than before, both among and within nations; everywhere the gap between rich and poor has widened. The author hopes the second United Nations development decade will prove more successful, because of increased technical knowledge about development and because of clearer recognition of the goals toward which development should be directed. He brings together two concerns, one with equality and the other with the need to avoid ever-increasing environmental degradation.
