ABSTRACT
In Lewis Carrol’s novel, Alice in Wonderland, Alice runs and runs only to find herself confined to the same place. The achievements of development in many of the developing countries, including Africa (especially), much of Latin America, and the South Asian nations since the 1950s, have not been much different from the experience of Alice in Wonderland. In many important respects, development policies of the last 50 years have not been suitable for the basic desiderata of human and sustainable development. Some successes have been achieved, particularly in the areas of reducing absolute poverty, increasing longevity and literacy. But the failures have left us standing still or even going backwards. Relative poverty has increased, trust diminished to low levels, AIDS and other diseases have sapped the potential of (especially) Africa, and financial crises along with money laundering and terrorism have increased the instabilities of the system.
