ABSTRACT
In the last 30 years new nations have discovered that they need not be slaves to former colonial masters, to technological passivity in the face of nature’s cruelties or to mass poverty. None of these conditions is their preordained destiny. Yet, although development has been preached to them as the way to societal salvation, it has all too often betrayed the hopes it awakened. Not surprisingly, therefore, experts and common people alike now search for alternative development strategies. Poor people everywhere have always understood that economic progress usually benefits others and leaves them more vulnerable than before to forces they cannot control. It is the belated recognition of this tragic outcome by development experts, however, that now promotes traditional values to a place of honor in development debates. Even hard-nosed financial planners and technical problem-solvers now acknowledge that traditional values must not be recklessly destroyed if genuine development is to take place.
