ABSTRACT
The poorer rural people must help themselves; but this they often cannot do. The initiative lies with outsiders who have more power and resources and most of whom are neither rural nor poor. This chapter provides some hope that it will be of some use to these outsiders, especially but not only those directly engaged in rural development work. Many of these are headquarters, regional, district and subdistrict staff in government departments in Third World countries in administration, agriculture, animal husbandry, community development, cooperatives, education, forestry, health, irrigation, land development, local government, public works, water development, and the like. The extremes of rural poverty in the third world are an outrage. In third world countries as elsewhere, academics, bureaucrats, foreigners and journalists are all drawn to towns or based in them. All are victims, though usually willing victims, of the urban trap.
