ABSTRACT
Political confidence is impossible without strong and unequivocal leadership. Unless one person or group of people has a clear mandate to make decisions on behalf of the people and is prepared to take the responsibility of executive action, then any effort to improve conditions will be blocked by the reactionary suspicions of a population unable to trust any agent of change. Political progress does not ensure economic development. Economic confidence is essential to popular effort and this cannot be sustained by national pride alone. At village level it rests on a base of adequate and secure resources and will stimulate effort only if there is a recognized and real possibility of increasing those resources. Confidence between peasant and development agent cannot be left to depend on the occasional happy accidents, and disparate once-for-all projects are wasteful in the long run.
