ABSTRACT
In 1967 the World Bank created the Commission on International Development, headed by Lester B. Pearson, former Prime Minister of Canada. Its job was to undertake a “grande assize” of two decades of effort by international agencies and lending countries. Sri Lanka is a relatively small island state off the southeastern tip of India. In many ways it is more similar to the Indian subcontinent than to Southeast Asia. For example, in 1980 the estimated per capita income and per capita gross national product were similar to that of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan; all four countries were among the poorest 30 in the world, well below Indonesia and the Philippines. Orthodox economists regularly cite the newly industrializing Asian countries (mainly Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) as the prime examples of how underdeveloped countries, maintaining a capitalist economy, can overcome their relative poverty and move on to a modern society.
