ABSTRACT
In current discussions the tenns "underdeveloped" and "backward" are generally used as though they were completely interchangeable by applying them to aggregate geographical concepts such as "countries," "areas," and "regions," or by equating them with certain broad indices such as low incomes or capital investment per head. It is more illuminating, in my view, to give these terms different connotations by using the former to mean underdeveloped resources, and the latter to refer to the backward people of a given area. In this paper I shall argue that this distinction is fundamental to the understanding of the nature of economic backwardness.
