ABSTRACT
The problems of the economic development of the poor countries of today’s world is one of the most widely discussed topics of our time. Experts in various fields such as economics, politics, sociology and engineering have held different views about the nature of underdevelopment and poverty, its causes and its remedies. It has now been fully recognized that the nature and causes of the ‘poverty of the nations’ are very complex and the remedies are neither easy nor quick. The understanding of the problem of underdevelopment requires a good knowledge of certain basic characteristics of the less-developed countries (henceforward to be referred to as LDCs). The analysis of these characteristics will shed some light on the peculiar economic and social conditions of production, consumption and distribution of income and wealth in the LDCs, which will help us to draw some policy implications.
