ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to analyse the rhetoric of local development, consisting mainly of the views and opinions of the rural netas about the problems they encounter in their everyday life, the solutions they suggest and the agencies they prefer for the implementation of those schemes. It sets out the stage for the subsequent analysis of the perception of social conflict caused by the process of development and the range of action, both institutional and radical, that local elites undertake in order to achieve their objectives. The local political arena is a battle ground of competing issues, ideas and rhetoric with which different sets of political actors seek to give concrete shape to their interests. The social construction of the problematique of development requires an operational definition of local development as a sounding board against which competing and complementary images can be assembled.
