People and the State

Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology General editor: Jack Goody

52 PEOPLE AND THE STATE

For other titles in this series turn to page 333

People and the state An anthropology of planned development

A.F. ROBERTSON Darwin College, Cambridge

The right of the University of Cambridge to print and sell all manner of books was granted by Henry VIII in 1534. The University has printed and published continuously since 1584.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge London New York New Rochelle Melbourne Sydney

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521265492 © Cambridge University Press 1984 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1984 Re-issued in this digitally printed version 2007 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 84-7652 ISBN 978-0-521-26549-2 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-31948-5 paperback

For Francesca

Contents

List of figures and map Preface Introduction

page ix xi 1

1 History Introduction 1917-39: Foundations 1939-55: Techniques for growth 1950-70: Modernisation 1950-70: The Third World - Us and Them The 1960s: The rise of Development Studies 1970-80: Underdevelopment and the crisis in planning Conclusion: The development of planning Appendix A: Aid and development planning Appendix B: Planning in Britain Appendix C: Some significant dates in the history of national development planning 2

Structures and processes Introduction The state and the planners The planning process: ideal and reality Planning ideas: symbols and languages Planning time: targets and phases Planning economies: sectors and regions Planning resources: development projects Planners and the public Appendix D: Thirty-eight thousand development programmes

vn

7 7 9 18 26 35 43 48 61 69 75 78 85 85 88 97 106 111 115 120 128 139

Contents 3

Organisations Introduction The community and its development Administrative organisation: development agents and agencies Economic organisation: cooperatives and communes Political organisation: councils and committees Organising ideas: the mass media and education

140 140 142 150 160 170 175

4

Contradictions Introduction People as planners Social movements and Utopian images Utopia created: reformist movements Utopia pursued: revolutionary movements Utopia, the state and social science Populism: an ideology of national development planning

182 182 185 191 196 204 211 221

5

Malaysia - a case study Introduction The emergence of pluralism, the state, and planning Federation, centralisation and the emergence of FLDA Tun Razak and the First Malaysia Plan The crisis of May 1969: the search for a National Ideology Restructuring the nation: the New Economic Policy FLDA and the expansion of public enterprise The Third Malaysia Plan: reorganising society FLDA and social development The Fourth Malaysia Plan: reorganising the polity Towards 1990 - and thereafter Summary and conclusion

232 233 236 244 249 251 255 260 269 276 280 289 291

6

Conclusion: Anthropology and planned development

293

Bibliography A: Introduction, Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 B: Chapter 3 C: Chapter 4 and Chapter 6 D: Chapter 5 Index

307 307 314 317 321 325

vin

Figures and map

Figures 1.1 A.I A.2 2.1 3.1 3.2 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

Aid to India, 1951-65 page 38 Economic assistance appropriated by US Congress, 1948-79 71 'Genealogy' of the American foreign aid organisations 72 Planning organisations in Kenya, c. 1967 134 Some attitudes of officials at three levels of a development organisation 156 Cooperatives and communes: an explanatory scheme 162 Changing proportions of Malays, Chinese and Indians in the population of West Malaysia (Malaya) since 1884 238 Malaysia: a balance of power 243 Rukunegara 253 Formal structure of planning organisations in Malaysia, c. 1973-4 272 'Sectoral Development Programmes' in the four successive Malaysia Plans, 1966-85 281 Contribution of agriculture, manufacturing and government services to Malaysian GDP, 1970-90 290

Map Malaysia

IX

234

Preface

The two great wars of this century have generated much despair, but after each there was an efflorescence of reformist zeal throughout the world, on a scale hitherto unknown. Now, as world recession places severe limits on material ambitions, it seems the great enthusiasm for planned development of the 1950s and 1960s is burning itself out. Planning continues, but more grimly than before, and with fewer assurances of success. Idealists are mistrusted, and the study and practice of development is more concerned with technical refinements than with grand schemes for human progress. Increasingly, we are confronted with decay and the threat of what might well be the last great war - matters very much more urgent than dreams of wealth and welfare. Nevertheless, this book proceeds from an assumption that we need, more urgently than ever before, to take stock of our collective future. If we choose not to rely on luck, or on divine intervention, or on 'scientific' teleology, we must recognise that redemption will tax to the utmost our imaginative and organisational capacities. Every intellectual resource, including anthropology, must be pressed into service. But the only effective way of coming to grips with the future is to understand, and work upon, the world as it is and has been. We need sufficient realism to acknowledge that people are not angels, and the states which they inhabit are not, and are unlikely to become, an earthly paradise. Some anthropologists are enthused by development efforts, but most are perplexed about how we should become constructively involved. This book was initiated by a suggestion from Jonathan Benthall, Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute, for a 'handbook' on applied anthropology. This seemed timely and useful, but early drafts soon revealed that the task could not be done with conviction and honesty until some more general questions had been answered. Accordingly, the book became a search for a perspective which might prove illuminating for anthropologists and perhaps also for others interested in development. xi

Preface By some mysterious process, the authorial 'we' has established itself in the text. I doubt that this is false modesty or a desire to evade responsibility. I can only assume it is tacit recognition of the extent to which I have depended on the influence and ideas of others. I am aware that none of them would wish to be associated too explicitly with what I have written - other than by proper bibliographical attribution. Nevertheless, for very particular debts I must offer my heartfelt thanks to John Barnes, Francesca Bray, Moses Finley, Jack Goody, David Lehmann and John Toye. Much of the content of this book has been worked over, in and out of class, with colleagues and students here in Cambridge over the last dozen years. I am particularly grateful to the Development Studies students: planners, administrators, technicians and teachers from some seventy countries; friendly, sceptical and garrulous; men and women who have given me an education, and continue to give me all the comforts of an international dining club. Conducting enquiries in development agencies, one is persistently aware of how much one's presence taxes the goodwill and patience of busy staff. 'As between pellagra and tourists', an official of the Tennessee Valley Authority complained to Philip Selznick many years ago, 'I'll take pellagra' (Selznick 1949: 211). Having visited dozens of organisations I remain astonished by the kindness with which they receive inquisitive people like myself. I have particular debts to the staffs of AVA and CADU in Ethiopia, of Comilla in Bangladesh, of Gezira in The Sudan, and of FLDA in Malaysia. In Malaysia, where I have been privileged to work in 1972, 1977 and 1981, my pestering has assumed epidemic proportions: no major organisation has been immune, and I can only hope that all those who have helped me so generously find nothing in Chapter 5 to offend them. Again, I am at a loss about how I should deliver thanks to those (mostly civil servants) who might not welcome such attention. Let me, then, in their capacity as good friends, thank Wan and Sarah, Bairn and Fadillah, Jayos, Johari, Kamaruzzaman, Pa'Chu and Rohaini. To the Malaysian Government at large I offer a formal and sincere thankyou, especially for the privilege of a briefing in the National Operations Room in 1981. A few comments on the text: there are no footnotes: publishers' tendency to place these as endnotes is usually a nuisance to the reader. A hazard of this is that the text is occasionally fuller or more detailed than it would otherwise have been. References appear in the text thus: (Smith 1970: 123). The Bibliography is arranged in four sections: the first covers the Introduction, and Chapters 1 and 2 - there being a substantial overlap in references. The bibliographies for Chapter 4 and the Conclusion are similarly combined, but Chapters 3 and 5 each have their own. The intenxii

Preface tion is to present references thematically. The potential bibliography of the subjects treated is monstrous; the references are augmented by a severely restricted number of additional titles which I have found useful. Two points of detail: I have used the expression Third World' quite often to describe poorer countries variously engaged in planning development. There is no polemic intention behind this usage, it is just a vague descriptive phrase. I have also used the word Marxian in relation to the writings and expressed ideas of Karl Marx, and the word marxist in relation to his disciples and their work. Darwin College Cambridge January 1983

xin

A.F. ROBERTSON

Introduction

People plan. To do so is little more than the exercise of human rationality. It is a means by which we try to exert control over our daily lives, making decisions about how we should behave. Insofar as we are dealing with a future which is always uncertain, planning is a hazardous activity. Although much of it concerns matters of routine, it still requires a good deal of imagination. We plan for immediate tasks like providing a meal, but we are also engaged in longer-term enterprises, like building a house or choosing a career. Some of our planning is personal and some of it is concerned with collective activities. If the former is a matter of 'making up our own minds', the latter involves groups of people in decisionmaking, and is very much a political activity. Although we all plan, we are not all engaged in planning 'development', if by this we mean the organisation of our collective progress and welfare. Still fewer of us are involved in national development planning, a recent and very specialised variant of the broader human activity which, nevertheless, has a pervasive influence on the daily lives of most people in most countries. In the 1980s, national planning has the appearance of a sprawling and amorphous mass of schemes and projects, competing doctrines and policies, ramifying national and international bureaucracies, occasional successes and many failures. We might conclude that all this is just a messy accident of history, but such an apology cannot disguise the fact that planned development has been a very determined act of human will. At some time during the course of this century almost every country in the world has sought to take this authoritative grip on its own future; in many ways it is as interesting to enquire why a handful of states have not had national plans, as why the great majority have. Although development planning could now be regarded as mankind's most ambitious collective enterprise, our understanding of it remains debilitatingly vague. This may be because the phenomenon is simultaneously so new, so complex and so widespread that we have not yet been able to form a coherent, generalised understanding of it. Moreover, 1

Introduction the failures and frustrations of recent years have discouraged ambitious Overviews. Today, the call is for less grandiose schemes, for small-scale and short-term projects which are more immediately responsive to 'basic needs', and for analyses which are appropriately microscopic. While planners are pinning their hopes on attention to detail, it may seem perverse for an anthropologist to insist on the necessity of a global interpretation. We are, after all, identified as students of the social microcosm, specialists in families and villages rather than national and international affairs. What possible illumination could an anthropological perspective afford? Some time ago, Roger Bastide urged that we should analyse development plans and activities 'as the old anthropology analysed kinship systems, economic and political institutions, spontaneous processes of change, and with exactly the same techniques of approach' (1973:180-1). This is an interesting challenge to which anthropologists have not responded directly, probably because we have found it more convenient to work with the analytical categories of other disciplines in dealing with 'development'. The notion that anthropology itself is somehow analytically incapacitated is very strange, and will become a specific object of enquiry in later chapters. If political scale has been a deterrent, we should remind ourselves that some of the most important descriptive and analytical ideas in anthropology are highly aggregative, expressing a concern to interpret society and culture 'in the round'. In this book we shall identify national development planning as a major institution of the twentieth-century world. Institution is a familiar anthropological device for assembling recurrent ideas and activities into a single category (marriage, chiefship, religion) for purposes of description, analysis and comparison. We shall argue that such a 'rounded' view of planning is now urgently required: to interpret it as a distinctive variant of a more generalised human activity may help us to understand how and why it has become such a potent force in the world today and, more important, how it might serve human interests more humanely and efficiently. To put it very simply, we shall portray planning as a body of customs which are expressed in particular kinds of social process. How and why these customs have emerged and become so widespread, is the starting point for our enquiry. Why we should have these customs rather than some other, is the concluding point. In the first chapter we shall review the history of planning, tracing the origins of the modern institution to the growth of industrialism and the nation state during the last two centuries. National planning has become one of the principal means by which modern states bring political power to bear on the organisation of resources, to achieve more rapid growth by the pursuit of industrialisation. Today, 2

Introduction 'Forms of planning and budgeting in poor countries are essentially alike, partly because they are copied from Soviet, European and (in a few instances) American models and partly because they have evolved in response to similar environmental forces' (Caiden & Wildavsky 1974: xvii). Following the Second World War, national planning received much impetus from the process of decolonisation, the boom in the western economies, international concern for economic growth in the newly independent states, the proliferation of aid, trade and communications, competition among the superpowers, and the rise of international organisations. Especially among the newer states, national planning has become a political credential, a device for doing business in the international arena as well as the accepted instrument for transforming economy and society within each state. The structures and processes of the institution are described and analysed in Chapter 2. Persisting with the anthropological perspective we shall argue that planning, in coming to grips with an uncertain future, depends on various techniques and symbolic systems, which are used to manipulate time, people, resources and activities. We shall point out that application of this limited range of devices requires a degree of optimism and confidence, and that there are dangers in regarding development techniques and categories as absolute or neutral, or allowing them to become unquestioned orthodoxies in the study and practice of development. It is here that the idea of national planning as an 'institution' has particular force. To some anthropologists the term will seem quaint, even disreputable, mainly because of its association with normative aspects of behaviour within structural-functional traditions of analysis. However, planning is by its very nature a normative activity - the formulation of ideas about what people ought to do, and how they ought to set about it. It is also 'conservative' as well as 'progressive' - a fact which the twentieth-century enthusiasm for 'development' seems to have obscured. It is a means of organising social continuity, part of the taxing business of maintaining existing social and political structures, and present levels of welfare. National planning, once so novel, has become increasingly concerned with matters of routine, and at the same time planning itself has become routinised. The essential purpose of this book should be understood: it is not about the diversity of development policy, it is about the unity of development planning. While we have attempted to illustrate our argument extensively, the purpose is not to explain how and why development in, say, Poland differs from development in Peru, although our perspective may contribute to such an explanation. Plainly, our dogged search for the institutional common factors of planning will offend those who prefer to 3

Introduction insist on the diversity of development experience. It is not our purpose to deny this diversity; instead we shall try by selective illustration to indicate how the generalities of planning relate to, and find expression in, the multifarious geographical, political, economic and historical contexts of the states which plan. More than this, in Chapter 5 we shall discuss in detail the case of Malaysia, tracing the ways in which the global institution of planning, as we have defined it in the earlier chapters, has found expression in the experience of a particular state. Although it has a stoutly asserted liberal creed, Malaysia has planned with great vigour and determination, and has in turn made its own contributions to the general lore of planning. We shall explain how and why Malaysia has come to depend on planning and, by tracing the development process through to particular projects, show how mundane details of social organisation may be interpreted within the very broad framework advocated. Planned development involves translating ideas into concrete activities, and this clearly depends on the resources at the disposal of particular states. Malaysia has been more fortunate, but also better organised, than many. In Chapter 3 we shall review the forms of social, political and economic organisation which are habitually used in planned development. Looking at administrative systems, cooperatives and communes, committees and councils, and means of communication, we shall argue that development organisations are in fact variations on a surprisingly narrow range of basic themes. They are premised on the need of the state to turn an 'unreliable citizenry into a structured, readily accessible public' (Selznick 1949: 220). In fact, they become the site of a contest between people and officials in which two styles of organisation, 'community' and 'bureaucracy', merge in complex patterns of idea and activity. It is at this level that we are reminded forcibly that planning is politics. National planning both expresses and reinforces the power of the state, but it makes an issue of public participation. This in turn generates conflicts of interest as well as of understanding. One of the contradictions of planning is that it must presume, and build upon, public consensus about the purposes and processes of development: that ordinary people will share the opinions of national leaders about the virtues and necessity of economic growth and will be prepared to share the costs as well as the benefits. A state must insist authoritatively that there is only one path to progress, but this may well be at odds with the multifarious notions of planning and progress which continually well up from within subject populations. The conflict, actual or potential, is between one dominant view of what development is about, and a plurality of popular opinions. The difference is not simply one of political interest, it is epistemological: divergent views of the meaning of planning itself and of the ideal worlds 4

Introduction which 'development' proposes. Accordingly, officials complain of public inertia, apathy and stupidity, while people complain that they are the victims of bureaucratic force and folly. We explore these issues in Chapter 4, comparing the premises of national planning with that more general human propensity of which it has become a peculiar twentieth-century variant. We shall examine the relationships between popular movements for change and the reformist interests of the state, an encounter which reaches its most profound crisis in social revolution. Planned development may be a consequence or a precursor of revolution, but it is antithetical to it: no state plans its own downfall. Instead, states plan ameliorative change - or else stagnate, and expose themselves to political upheaval. It is powerful states which plan development and (if only in rhetoric) guarantee its success. They also take out a monopoly on reformist ideas and ideals: hence the pervasive ideological assertion that it is states, not people, that plan progress. In their pursuit of national development, regimes profess to be guided by various ideologies - this or that brand of socialism or liberalism. If we are to understand the purposes and processes of planned development we must ask some very blunt questions about the kind of vision which these ideologies do or do not have about the future. What sort of ideal world are we labouring towards, and what will it really be like to inhabit? Such a line of enquiry affords little encouragement. We are forced to the conclusion that modern ideologies of progress are sustained by political competition within and between states; they are preoccupied with immediate and short-term gains, but as guides to our collective future they are vacuous. The vigour of this ideological competition has helped to divide and fragment our view of human progress, and has obscured the uniformity of national development planning in the world today. In the earlier chapters of this book we shall draw attention to striking similarities in policy and practice in states of very different ideological persuasion, and explain how this uniformity has increased during the course of the twentieth century. This is strangely at odds with the increasing divergence of national ideologies. In Chapter 4 we shall argue that, in reality, the political encounter between people and the state which is very much at the heart of planned development is not greatly influenced by overt ideologies, but is characterised by a much more eclectic, pragmatic, short-range pattern of interests, issues and activities, which may be identified as populist. Most planners, and most social scientists (particularly anthropologists) who are practically involved in development efforts, are populists of one sort or another. This often puts them in an uncomfortable relationship with national ideology and with their own intellectual beliefs. In Chapter 4 we shall make an issue of the ideological complicity of social scientists, and the dilemmas they confront in attempting to construe and manipulate 5

Introduction the future. While we would insist that social science has had a more pervasive influence in world affairs than many professional planners would be prepared to admit, we must acknowledge that doctrinal conflict between liberals and marxists has left us with a social science which is a source of heat rather than illumination and which, as an intellectual resource for coming to grips with an unpromising future, is morally inert and dispiritingly unimaginative. In this book we have sought to use the familiar apparatus of social anthropology, the comparative study of social structure and process, to enhance our understanding of what planned development is. There can be no doubt that we have, in the process, also adopted the essentially populist attitude of anthropology - indeed, this finds expression in the political disjunction which gives the book its title. However, this does not prevent us from recognising the inadequacies of such a perspective, particularly if we have ambitions to use anthropology to enhance our understanding of what planned development should be. If it is possible for social science to redeem itself, it must return, we shall argue, to some very old and unfashionable interests. Only then may we find the more humane, rational and realisable images of our collective future which we now so urgently require.

1 History

In this chapter we trace the history of national development planning, explaining how and why it has emerged as a global institution during the course of this century. Ideological and other differences have disguised the increasing similarities of planning: it has grown up amid international competition and conflict, yet it has common origins in both the socialist and capitalist states. We discuss the diffusion of the organisation and techniques of planning to the poor countries of the Third World, and consider how social science has helped to shape - and how it has been shaped by - changing ideas about the organisation of development.

Introduction The theory of development planning as applied to the poor countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America derived from Soviet centralized planning procedures reinterpreted, via Keynesian macroeconomics, to fit the circumstances of the mixed economy. Theories of development converged and crystallized into a single model - national comprehensive planning which despite setbacks, varying degrees of sophistication, reinterpretation, modification, and doubt, still remains the model of choice. (Caiden & Wildavsky 1974: 169) Since the Second World War almost every country in the world, from Britain and Bolivia to Finland and Fiji, has had a national development plan. Why this should be so is one of the intriguing questions of the twentieth century. Indeed, it may be no less interesting to ask why a curious handful of countries (Hong Kong, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, the USA) have not had national plans. For reasons which are largely ideological it is customary to stress differences in the ideals, procedures and achievements of development planning in one country and another. It would of course be absurd to deny that there are salient distinctions in the way development is organised in the USSR and France, or in the USSR and Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, in these countries, and most noticeably in the

History countries of the Third World, the ideas and procedures of national planning show striking similarities, and it is these which warrant historical and structural explanation. As we shall see when we explore the experience of Malaysia, an understanding of the global common factors in planning is a necessary preliminary to an explanation of the particular uses which one state has made of them. National planning is surely mankind's most ambitious effort at improving material and social welfare. This twentieth-century enterprise has been made possible by two earlier, interrelated historical endowments, the development of industrial processes and the formation of nation states: The diffusion of industrialism, carried out by national units, is the dominant event of our time' (Gellner 1964: 40). The planning of economic growth has become something of an imperative for nation states, particularly those which are relatively poor and backward. There is no doubt that national planning, although ostensibly benign and altruistic, has been moulded by inter-state competition, and particularly by warfare. Kitching has observed that the main aim of 'politicians and statesmen', from the nineteenth century onwards, has been to organise industrial development 'to protect or enhance the power and independence of the nation states over which they ruled. In particular, without an advanced and efficient industrial structure it was not possible to produce the new armaments required for defence or conquest, and thus one was more likely to fall prey to more powerful industrial powers' (1982: 3-4). As we shall see, the great wars of this century required a degree of concerted national organisation hitherto unknown, which established paradigms for ostensibly more pacific development endeavours. When, in the 1950s, the temperature of war changed, and the Third World became a new arena of competition for the industrialised states, aid and trade became the main strategic devices, exercising a powerful effect on the means and purposes of planning throughout the world. In 1937 Lionel Robbins asserted that 'in the world we live in, planning is done by states . . . National planning takes place in an international milieu' (1937: 8). It is because development planning is so emphatically an international affair that it has so many structural and procedural similarities in so many different countries today. However, modern planning institutions incorporate two quite different patterns which emerged earlier this century. Up to the Second War, the dominant influence was the reorganisation of Russia after the 1917 revolution, the draconian process of planned economic growth presided over by Stalin. The second pattern was initiated by the Depression of the 1930s, which prompted the western capitalist countries to ensure economic recovery, stability and growth by state intervention in the economy at large. This experience was extensively applied in the colonial, and subsequently independent states, 8

Foundations after the war. Competition among the 'superpowers' ensured that the purposes of planning were ideologically distinguished, but by the 1960s it was increasingly evident that the structure, organisation and procedures of planning in countries like India or Indonesia owed as much to the experience of Russia as to the experience of America and the western European countries. National development planning has become an international institution by a process of diffusion, through colonial rule, the international expansion of markets and industrial capitalism, through direct intervention in the name of aid, trade or technical assistance by one state in the affairs of another, and through the massive expansion of the international agencies. Inevitably this has brought the rise of the professional planner, and a tendency to reduce what are inescapably political problems of development to technicalities, to routines, and to 'neutral policy tools' which can conveniently be detached from the social and economic ambitions of particular regimes. The techniques of planning in the soviet 'command' economy have influenced, explicitly and directly, the techniques of 'indicative' planning in France, and vice versa; the experience of both has influenced other countries throughout the world. It is around this technical core that the institutions of development planning including many of its ideas and ideals - have converged. As we shall see, 'good planning' has become very generally equated with the practice of democracy and, as John Dunn has shrewdly observed, 'we are all democrats today' (1979: 1). States which do not plan either do not need to because they are already sufficiently well-off without it, or else cannot do so because they are politically and economically incapacitated. As Lipton has remarked, 'central planning centrally financed' is the only remedy available to states threatened by stagnation, a course of action which is neither specifically 'socialist' nor 'capitalist' - particularly in the context of poor Third World countries where such distinctions do not in any case count for much (1971: 239-40). As world recession deepens, the problem for many states is that national planning becomes simultaneously more urgent and more intractable. 1917-39: Foundations

State intervention in national economies has a long history, but national development planning is undoubtedly an invention of the twentieth century. During the last sixty years, two quite distinct traditions of planning have converged in the so-called 'mixed' economies of the Third World. The first of these emerged with the development of a socialist state in Russia after the 1917 Revolution; the second was the consequence of efforts in the western capitalist countries to deal with the disturbing 9

History effects of the 1932-3 Depression. Both traditions have thus been born of social, economic and political crisis, but have sought remedies in different kinds of economic intervention. In Russia, the imperative was the restructuring of the social relations of production; in the west, the imperative was the control of markets. For both, the immediate task was the same: the pursuit of economic growth through industrial expansion. The same task confronts the developing countries of the world today, and the debates about how this should be done, efficiently and equitably, linger on. One of these debates is about whether development is properly an evolutionary process or a revolutionary consequence. Gellner has asserted that 'development is characteristically post-revolutionary, not pre; collective, deliberate, and imitative, and not individualist, unconscious and endogenous' (1964: 136). This implies that orderly, planned growth must be a consequence of some drastic social reorganisation, and that the ambition of most poor countries today to develop without major social upheaval is unrealistic. However, Nove (1969) has pointed out that development - in the form of rapid increases in agricultural and industrial output between the years 1890 and 1913 - could as well be regarded as a cause of the Revolution and of socialist planning in Russia. Certainly, after the First World War, Revolution and civil war, the Bolsheviks were obliged to find effective solutions to pressing economic and political problems. Planning was a means of declaring forcefully their intention to realise the socialist dream, and to provide a programme which would serve to improve their grip on the small industrial proletariat and the vast, diverse peasantry. Bukharin and Preobrazhensky, the most conspicuous ideologues of the period, insisted that 'society will be transformed into a huge working organization for cooperative production . . . It is obvious that so comprehensive an organization presupposes a general plan of production . .. Without a general plan, without a directive system, and without careful calculation and book-keeping, there can be no organization' (1966: 114-15). The pursuit of socialism in Marxist-Leninist terms meant an outright denial of the merits of a free market economy, and a determined effort to reorganise the social structures of production. The New Economic Policy propounded in 1921 and the First Soviet Five-Year Plan of 1928 thus established profoundly influential paradigms for economic growth and social transformation, by mobilising the resources of the state within a boldly drawn and rigorously pursued framework of ideology and policy. As is well known, this was not achieved without bitter and protracted struggle. At an early stage there was an important debate between the 'genetic' planners who were more enthusiastic about releasing and 10

Foundations manipulating market forces, and the 'teleological' planners who sought social transformation in more dogmatic terms. The latter prevailed, and through the often draconian agency of party and state, the 'Command Economy' was established. Stalin's 1928 Plan led to a rapid increase in investment in heavy industry, coercive collectivisation of agriculture, and liquidation of private enterprise to mobilise resources for the 'Great Leap Forward'. Difficulties encountered seemed only to nourish the endeavour: The resultant strains, sacrifices, shortages, led to the creation of an elaborate system of material allocation and central direction of resources, in order to implement the planned priorities of the state' (Nove 1969: 70). The agony of Russian development was the way in which it mustered the resources for rapid industrialisation by squeezing the peasant farmers. The subsequent history of planning has been dominated by this tension between agriculture and industry, so often characterised by images of an underproductive and downtrodden peasantry and a privileged, expanding industrial sector. It seems that the developing countries today have evaded many of the traumas of industrialisation by mustering the resources for investment from outside, in the form of aid grants or loans from the World Bank. In 1928, the USSR was not so fortunate; development was a truly national endeavour - a fact which has impressed itself profoundly on the subsequent history of national development planning. It was state power which had secured the domestic resources for Soviet development, in rivalry rather than in collaboration with other nation states. From the outset, the Bolsheviks were galvanised by fears of 'anti-communist crusades from the West' (Nove 1969: 69), which were in turn mobilised by the International ambitions of the Revolution. In other words, at a very early stage in the twentieth century, planned development became an international affair, albeit in negative terms: a more positive context was established only after the Second World War. As Ellman observes, socialist countries always seem to have been motivated by invidious comparison of their own material welfare with that of the wealthy capitalist countries. 'The imperative need to catch up with the advanced countries, especially in the crucial field of military technology' has given Soviet planning much of its impetus, but has also given it some fundamental contradictions (Ellman 1979: 11-12). The mood of international competition is made very clear in the exhortations of Stalin: 'To slacken the tempo would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten. But we do not want to be beaten! One feature of the history of old Russia was the continual beatings she suffered because of her backwardness . . . ' (op. cit.: 12-13). Such cries echo throughout the twentieth century as nation states enter the competitive 11

History world of development, occasionally pleading for revolutionary change but more usually advocating orderly, planned growth. The Russian Revolution and the consequent planning effort were very specifically concerned with slapping down the 'invisible hand' of Adam Smith's free market economy based on the exercise of self-interest. It is therefore significant that the other major influence on national planning in the twentieth century arose from doubts in the capitalist countries of the west that such an economy could in fact serve to combine individual decisions into 'socially rational' ones (Ellman 1979: 2). The years of slump and depression which followed the First War made it painfully evident that the economy of a country like Britain was not 'self-regulating' and could not be left constructively to its own devices. Tendencies to excess savings could upset the supposed equilibrium by reducing output and lowering prices, causing the great vice of the age, unemployment. On the other hand, excessive investment could set prices spiralling. The pressing political consequences of this made it evident to John Maynard Keynes that governments should intervene to restore the equilibrium and promote controlled economic growth by managing the level of aggregate demand by, for example, increasing public expenditure (a strategy which underlay the rearmament programmes, especially in Germany) or building up a budget deficit by borrowing (part of President Roosevelt's strategy in the 1930s). By focussing on these aggregate features of the economy, Keynes can be credited with the invention of the distinction between the 'macro' and the 'micro' levels in the management of an economy: 'This curious coexistence of macro and micro reflects a society in which the overall regulation of the economy is in the hands of the state, whereas concrete production and distribution decisions are in the hands of private firms' (Ellman 1979: 4). In Britain this fostered a creed in the party political centre that 'if the state ensured full employment and growth by Keynesian macro economic policies, the micro allocation of resources . . . could be left to market forces' (ibid.). This kind of intervention became associated with the 'Liberal Democracies' of the world, and with the 'mixed economies' (where private and state enterprises coexist) of many of today's developing countries. In the archetypal mixed economy of Britain, Keynes' views evoked much interest in the 1930s; the postSecond-World-War boom reduced the evident need for such strategies but in the 1960s and 1970s prices and incomes policies were revived and Britain produced its only, and unsuccessful, National Plan (1964). More recent years have been marked by a renewal of faith in Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' and much more selective efforts to control the money supply (see Appendix B). After the First World War there was considerable pessimism in intel12

Foundations lectual circles about the prospects for twentieth-century man. Could continued human progress be guaranteed, or was a return to barbarism more probable? Throughout the world Soviet efforts to plan production and control consumption were observed with acute interest - and doubtless influenced Keynes himself, as well as making his readers more receptive to notions of state intervention in the Liberal economies, outside the historical materialist strictures of Marxist-Leninism. If there were indeed crises of capitalism, planning might serve to rectify them and perhaps also hold the forces of revolution at bay. L.T. Hobhouse's concern for human progress in the pursuit of 'the Rational Good' offered to the Liberal eye a vision of man's intellectual capacity to determine the future of his society. Hobhouse stated very cogently in his copious writings the problems of social development within the managerial rubric of the state; one of his disciples, Morris Ginsberg, remarks that 'he saw clearly that the problem facing mankind is, essentially, how to reconcile extension in scale of economic and political organization and growing efficiency in the utilization of the forces of nature with freedom and mutuality' (1979: 201). For some, the process of development extended to a very fundamental reconstruction of the nature of man himself. Eugenics was a twentiethcentury elaboration of Francis Galton's suggestion that governments should tinker with the biological make-up of man and of human populations. The association of such ideas with National Socialism in Germany greatly diminished their popularity by the end of the Second World War, and only very recently have respectable scholars cared to raise the desirability of bio-social engineering in the context of man's current scientific capacities and social problems (v. Manuel & Manuel 1979: 811ff.). Other forms of 'social engineering' not only survived the War, but became highly influential within it and in the planned economic transformations thereafter. Most conspicuous was the organisational example set by large corporate enterprises in the USA and the elaboration of techniques of 'integrated project management' - as they might now be called. Within the rubric of industrial capitalism the organisation of men and machines had been raised to the status of an art, if not exactly a science. Frederick W. Taylor, credited with the invention of 'Scientific Management' - the intensive planning of production processes involving the use of such devices as time-and-motion study - became the main prophet of Efficiency, and 'Taylorism' spread doctrinally with a celerity which Marx would have greatly envied to the industrialising societies of the world, even (on the advocacy of Lenin) to the USSR. During the 1930s, business schools proliferated, teaching the techniques of comprehensive planning and of cost-benefit analysis which were to reappear in project design and appraisal in the poor countries of the developing world. 13

History The Depression provoked extensive political debate in the USA and led to the 'New Deal', a portmanteau label for the policies of President Roosevelt's 1933 to 1937 administration. Directed primarily against unemployment, this involved extensive federal government investment in, and legislation in favour of, both public and private enterprise. A central issue was how such state intervention could be regarded as compatible with a robustly asserted spirit of free enterprise and the peculiarly American (as opposed to the peculiarly Russian) meaning of Democracy. These issues loomed large in what was probably the most famous New Deal project, the Tennessee Valley Authority, which sought to bring together 'positive government and regional planning'. Largely through Philip Selznick's famous study (1949), the TVA has become the locus classicus of the dilemma of efficient project management and effective public participation - 'reconciling over-all planning with the values of democracy' (Selznick 1949: 3). The TVA was established in 1933 as a response to public pressure for the 'disposition of government-owned properties at Muscle Shoals, Alabama' (op. cit.: 4). As part of the 1914-18 War effort, Wilson dam and two nitrate plants had been built, and it was suggested that in peacetime they should be redeployed for the production of electricity and fertilisers. After much debate it was decided that broad regional development and conservation should be undertaken under public rather than private ownership. President Roosevelt himself described the TVA as 'a corporation clothed with the power of government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of private enterprise. It should be charged with the broadest duty of planning for the proper use, conservation and development of the natural resources of the Tennessee River drainage basin and its adjoining territory for the general social and economic welfare of the Nation' (op. cit.: 5). This was a new concept of regional development; neither a state nor a federal organisation, the TVA was charged with the 'unified development' of an 'integral unit' (ibid.: 6, 5) and as such became a widely influential model for development planning: 'The Tennessee Valley Authority has become the subject of widespread comment and study in all parts of the world. In Central Europe, in the Philippines, in Palestine, in China, wherever, indeed, new methods of approach to the problems of resource development and social planning have been discussed, the TVA idea has been in the forefront. TVA has become not merely an administrative model and prototype, but a symbol of the positive, benevolent intervention of government for the general welfare' (op. cit.: 19). A notable contribution of the New Deal to planning techniques in post-war years was the devising of cost-benefit analysis for the evaluation 14

Foundations of public projects (v. Griffin and Enos 1970: 107). It had become evident that major public investment programmes had to be justified and evaluated in terms which were saliently different from those of a profitmaximising business corporation. The New Deal experience serves as a reminder that project planning historically predates national planning (although the scale of TVA operations might make it a match for the National Plans of some of the smaller developing countries today). Influential models for large-scale development had been evolving elsewhere; a conspicuous example is the Gezira scheme in the Sudan (see p. 52), established as early as 1913 with an initial government investment of £3 millions to produce cotton for the mills of Lancashire. Like the TVA, the Gezira scheme has been evoked repeatedly as a model for rural development (IBRD 1955: 317). Planners have been inclined to lament that such ventures have not been assembled efficiently into a usable 'case law', but it is clear that the history of the influence of project on project has been complex and subtle, contributing to a generalised lore of planning and to the emergence of some striking procedural orthodoxies. It is understandable that planners should wish to seek reliable and replicable precedents, and this is nowhere more evident than in the late twentiethcentury enthusiasm for 'Regional Package Projects' - whose TVA ancestry is unmistakable (v. Hirschman 1967: 21). For something more closely approximating a prototype for the national development plan of the 1950s and 1960s, we have to look to the colonial world. In 1906, King Leopold of the Belgians produced a bold programme for the development of the Congo, involving mining enterprises, road and rail networks, and so on. In the British experience, a precocious and highly influential exercise was Governor Guggisberg's plan for the development of the Gold Coast: 'Guggisberg . . . seems to have been not only the first in the British colonial empire but also among the first in the modern world to put forward in outline in 1919 an integrated ten-year development plan. The Guggisberg plan made provision for surveys and research as well as for actual development work and included both the aspects which have come to be known since as the economic and the welfare or social services aspects of development. It would be difficult today in Ghana to mention any major project, whether still under discussion or already implemented, which had not been investigated, sometimes in a fair amount of detail, under the impulse of the 1919 plan' (Niculescu 1958: 63-4). Of the many other colonial exercises which have a place in the history of planning, the devising of the Bengal Famine Code is worthy of mention: this is significant for its concern with monitoring social and economic as well as climatic indices for purposes of prediction as well as control. It involved the extensive collection of data and the 15

History preparation of elaborate integrated contingency plans for relief and rehabilitation, all put together with a high degree of bureaucratic finesse (v. Bengal Secretariat 1913). What was more specifically 'a first approach to a policy of centrally guided economic development' for the colonies was the establishment of the Empire Marketing Board in 1926 (Niculescu 1958: 58). Like the Colonial Development Act which followed three years later, the Board was rather more concerned to alleviate problems at home than to invest in the welfare of the colonies. The Development Act earmarked £1 million a year to finance industrial and (primarily) agricultural projects in the colonies, and in the eleven years between 1929 and 1940, £8.8 millions were actually spent (op. cit.: 59). Like the 'New Deal', the Act made it clear that significant public investment in development projects especially overseas - required a new kind of formalised programming and accounting. Thus, British colonial civil servants throughout the world were obliged to draw up development schemes if they wished to secure for 'their' territories a slice of the cake; under this stimulus, a Development Committee was set up in Uganda, for example, in 1936. Many of the proposed schemes looked more optimistic than rational, and as an ensemble resembled a shopping-list rather than the carefully integrated programme demanded by later planning techniques. An enthusiasm for planning fired the imagination and the nationalist fervour of colonial subjects as well as colonial servants. Pandit Nehru was greatly inspired by the Soviet experience, and went on to play a decisive role in the rich and elaborate history of national planning in India. Nehru established and became the first Chairman of the Congress Party's National Planning Committee in 1938, and although colonial government efforts during and immediately after the Second War stole much of his thunder, his ideas and the debates he generated probably had the more profound influence in the long run. Nove remarks that 'It is worth drawing the attention of historians of economic thought to the fact that development economics could be said to have been born in Russia in the 'twenties. There for the first time issues of investment strategy were perceived and debated, anticipating in remarkable degree the doctrines developed in the West in the 'fifties. The issues arose in this way because the state held the bulk of investment resources in its hands, and required to find criteria for their best use in the context of a development plan' (1969: 67). Outside the USSR, 'Development economics as a major interest of the economic profession and branch of the discipline was born during the Second World War' (Arndt 1972: 24). Arndt remarks that 'In all the works of the leading economists of the inter-war period, there is hardly a reference to the problems of the underdeveloped regions of the world' (op. cit.: 16) and that 'The most 16

Foundations likely place in which to find references to the underdeveloped countries in the treatises and textbooks of the period is in the chapters on population' (op. cit.: 18). However, 'Almost wholly ignored by the mainstream of Western economics during the inter-war period, the economic problems of underdeveloped and developing countries were at the same time the subject of quite a large specialist literature' (op. cit.: 19). It is significant that this literature, so important subsequently, was developing well beyond the confines of the ivory tower, mainly in the realm of public administration. One example would be the work of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), established under the aegis of the League of Nations in 1919; and another, the work of colonial officials like J.S. Furnivall and J.H. Boeke. At the same time Indian economists were searching for some more appropriate and applicable economic ideas - no doubt spurred on by feelings of hostility to traditions of western economics: K.N. Sen and N.S. Subba Rao are notable examples. By 1939 the uneasy relationship between social anthropology and colonial government had become well established and thoroughly discussed (v. Asad 1973; Kuper 1973). Government anthropologists worked in Nigeria from as early as 1908, and this particular, uneasy role was made famous by F.E. Williams in Melanesia, C.K. Meek in Nigeria, and R.S. Rattray in the Gold Coast. Anthropologists were, and still are, deeply divided about the applicability of their subject, and there is no doubt that the principal gains in the inter-war years were academic and intellectual. A prevailing attitude was that the proper business of anthropologists was to develop anthropology, and that others might use anthropology to develop the world if they so wished. American sociology proved to be a much greater influence on the elaboration of twentieth-century planning techniques. We have noted the influence of one of its principal branches, industrial sociology, already, but the rural sociology which had developed in the Land Grant Colleges and elsewhere - greatly fostered by the New Deal - was also of importance in finding ways of investigating and promoting technical innovation, and instructing those whose business was to deal with the 'human problems' of project design and implementation. The association of rural sociology with the poor mid-West and South of the USA made it the least fashionable branch of the discipline but, when the development of poor regions became more respectable internationally, the accumulated wisdom was invoked - even though its originators get less credit than they deserve. American rural sociology played a vital role, for example, in devising effective agricultural extension services and adapting Cooperative principles to local circumstances, both fundamental ingredients of rural development programmes throughout the world today. By the outbreak of the Second War the foundations of development 17

History planning had been laid, but they had been laid in ideologically ambivalent terms. After 1945 the world was to see itself in even more sharply divided terms: there were those who inhabited, or hoped to inhabit, a Liberal ideal world of free men competing in free markets, their differences of interest mediated in utilitarian terms by strong but benign democratic government; and those who inhabited, or hoped to inhabit, a socialist world comprising a collective economy and men bound to one another in rational altruism rather than by the dominance of the state. For both, ideal and reality were often sadly asunder, and planning became a means for repairing the breach. In this formative inter-war period the mood of indecision is well conveyed by Selznick, reflecting on the TV A: Whatever the ultimate outcome, it is evident that modern society has already moved rather far into the age of control. It is an age marked by widening efforts to master a refractory industrial system. That a technique for control will emerge, that there is and will be planning, is hardly in question. What is more doubtful is the character and direction of the new instruments of intervention and constraint. For these have been born of social crisis, set out piecemeal as circumstances have demanded; they have not come to us as part of a broad and conscious vision. As a consequence, the foundations of a clear-cut choice between totalitarian and democratic planning have not been adequately laid; nor has the distinction been altogether clear between planning directed toward some acceptable version of the common good and planning for the effective maintenance of existing and emerging centers of privilege and power. (Selznick 1949: 3)

1939-55: Techniques for growth 'Modernisation or Decadence': as the slogan of the first French national Plan (1947-50) indicates, the Second World War once again evoked a mood of pessimism about man and his intractable nature. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had demonstrated the awful powers at his disposal and throughout the 1950s public debate was much preoccupied with the threat of nuclear holocaust. If economic prosperity in the following decade reduced public anxiety about the imminent demise of mankind, the economically gloomy advent of the 1980s may be partly responsible for a return to the earlier mood of pessimism. The human effort required to wage global conflict on the scale of the Second War influenced the history of development planning in many ways, apart from suggesting that man ought to be devoting his energy and resources to more humane and productive ends. Any country seriously engaged in the war was obliged to plan on a scale and with a degree of complexity hitherto unknown. Moreover, the 'war economies' of different countries were strikingly similar: the organisation of conflict put the different traditions of macro-planning described above into the melting pot. The activities of one, often hostile, country influenced others: 18

Techniques for growth Hitler's New Order, and Japan's expansive 'Co-prosperity Sphere' certainly obliged the Allies to Think Big (v. Arndt 1972: 24). In the USSR existing methods of control, rationing and planning were greatly strengthened (Nove 1969: 75), proving more than a little instructive for British efforts - 'totalitarian' in the best patriotic spirit. 'By demonstrating the power of government action in mobilizing economic resources, the war itself generated a climate of optimism about what could be done to make a better world, abroad as much as at home' (Arndt 1972: 24). During the war, the highly influential notion of the Welfare State was established in Britain after the publication of the Beveridge Report in 1942 (v. Marshall 1975: 82ff.). This debated quite explicitly the relationship between Soviet planning and the management of a free market economy, with a view to eliminating 'disease, ignorance, idleness, physical want and squalor'(see Mayer et al. 1974:10). Concern for the development, and decolonisation, of British overseas territories was being urged with increasing insistence, notably by groups around the political centre like the Labour Party Fabians. 'What appeared to have been the very successful Russian and German experiments may also have semi-consciously permeated official thinking with a belief in the efficiency of long-range economic planning. The colonies, with their very much simpler economic structure and their apparent need for heavy public investment, may have seemed an ideal field for the application of ideas successfully developed by the administrations of the great totalitarian countries' (Niculescu 1958: 62). A more immediate spur to colonial planning efforts were riots in the West Indies, caused by the collapse of commodity prices during and after the Depression. The report of the Moyne Commission in 1938 persuaded the government to broaden discussion to development in the Empire at large, with a conspicuous accent on welfare. Introducing the consequent Colonial Development and Welfare bill in 1940, Malcolm MacDonald explained that it 'establishes the duty of taxpayers in this country to contribute directly, and for its own sake, towards development in the widest sense of the word of the colonial peoples for whose good government the taxpayers of this country are ultimately responsible' (op. cit.: 61). This focus on West Indian problems helped to bring to the fore a St Lucian economist, W. Arthur Lewis, who subsequently became one of the principal post-war architects of national planning. Under a revised version of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act in 1945, the British government allocated £120 millions in aid for a ten-year period, and appointed Lewis as Secretary of an Economic Advisory Committee to deal with disbursement. Colonial officials were required to make proposals, but initially plans were slow to appear, partly because of understaffing in the colonial service and partly because development funds 19

History were also supposed to be raised locally in the countries concerned - a major obstacle. These first "plans" were thus in fact only annual programmes for the spending of Colonial Development and Welfare Fund allocations' (Niculescu: 63); there was also a 'certain amount of cynicism' among colonial officers and some cavalier attitudes towards the preparation of plans (ibid.: 68). Extensive aid to the West Indies stimulated keenest efforts there, and Worthington's 1946 'Development Plan for Uganda' and Childs' 'Plan of Economic Development for Sierra Leone' were thoughtful and subsequently influential models. Some territories produced overenthusiastic responses, for example British Honduras which, taking the Secretary of State's demand for 'comprehensive plans' very literally, 'tried to cover all desirable developments of which a vivid imagination could conceive' (ibid.: 68). Gradually a pattern of planning established itself, and in the late 1950s Lewis could remark ruefully, addressing a Ghanaian audience, 'I have had the misfortune of having read about fifty development plans' (Lewis 1971: 405). In India, the colonial administration got off to a brisk start by establishing a Planning and Development Department in 1944. Its 'Second Report on Reconstruction and Planning' a year later became an important and durable source of future ideas: 'one may look in vain for any fundamental objective or method of the five-year plans of the 1950s which is not foreshadowed in this remarkable documentary product of the latter days of British rule' (Hanson 1966: 38). Although it stimulated much discussion, criticism and some counter-proposals, by the end of the 1940s an agreed and workable National Plan for India had not materialised. Three years after independence, again on Nehru's initiative, an Indian Planning Commission was set up in 1950, which soon accumulated extensive, perhaps even excessive, political power (op. cit.: 66ff.). The Commission's efforts were focussed by the British government's aid programme for the South and South-East Asian Commonwealth territories - the Colombo Plan. Its first efforts were 'little more than a collection of projects' (op. cit.: 89) but led to the publication, in July 1951, of a First Five-Year Development Plan for India. British attitudes to colonial planning were characteristically decentralised. Stanley, the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs, told Parliament in 1945, 'I have made it clear that there must be no question of detailed planning done in this country. It is not the idea of the administration of the Act to impose on the colonies a new heaven prefabricated in Whitehall. In the first place you cannot do that sort of planning efficiently in this country . . . you have to allow the maximum opportunity for the people of the territory themselves to be associated with planning, since it is their future that is being planned' (Niculescu 1958: 80). French approaches to colonial planning were, also characteristically, centralised. 20

Techniques for growth Proposals for integrated development projects were presented to the French parliament by Albert Sarraut as early as 1921, but the first effective initiative came in response to the British Act of 1929. A French Imperial Economic Conference was held in 1934-5, and a Colonial Development Fund set up with a budget of a billion francs a year for fifteen years (op. cit.: 71). After the war colonial planning was included within the French metropolitan plans - allowing much scope for debate about whose interests were being best served. The Commissariat General du Plan, established in 1946, produced its first 'plan for the modernisation and equipment of the French overseas territories' in January 1948. Known as the 'Plan Pleven' after the first Commissaire, this included many detailed project specifications for two consecutive five-year periods from 1946 to 1956. Finance was controlled and provided by two organisations: the Fond d'Investissement et de Developpement Economique et Social (FIDES) and the Caisse Centrale de la France d'Outre-Mer (CCFOM). After King Leopold IFs early start, the Belgian government prepared its first ten-year plan for the Congo in the late 1940s, and Holland set up its Prosperity Fund in 1947, mainly for the benefit of Surinam. By 1950, macro-economic planning had become a fundamental and generally accepted feature of colonial government: writing in 1979, van Arkadie has observed the remarkable continuity between pre- and post-colonial planning exercises 'in both problems and response in many policy areas, so that the interventionism of the past twenty years often follows paths established by the colonial administrations in and after the Second World War'(1979: 571). The attention which the European countries gave to planning in their colonies was largely inspired by the need to incorporate them in the war effort (v. Westcott 1981: 4-9; Kindleberger 1967: 279). After the war it was the European countries themselves which urgently needed planned development. In the momentous 'fifteen weeks' from February to June 1947, America undertook a series of responsibilities which influenced development planning profoundly. Britain had declared that it could no longer maintain its economic and military aid to Greece and Turkey, and, in the interests of maintaining 'free peoples', containing the growth of communist influence and consolidating American national interests abroad, the USA agreed to supply $300 millions of aid to Greece and $100 millions to Turkey. This had risen to a total of $1,500 millions in the year 1950-1, by which time it was apparent that much of the aid had been wasted because expenditure had not been adequately planned. In the European countries President Truman found a much more receptive clientele for his doctrines of American aid for the free (i.e. non-socialist) countries of the world. Under the direction of General George C. 21

History Marshall the European Recovery Plan was formulated and within the projected four year timespan its goals had been achieved - at a cost of $4,000 millions less than the projected $17,000 millions allocated by Congress. Packenham describes the Marshall Plan as 'the most successful program in the history of American foreign aid' (1973: 34). Retrospectively, circumstances could hardly have been more propitious: the Europeans had the skills and above all the desire to make the Plan succeed, and lacked only the necessary capital and materials. The Plan seemed to demonstrate how aid could secure political health in a region by the administration of 'economic medicine' (op. cit.: 33-4). The Marshall Plan idea was therefore extended through the newly formed Economic Co-operation Administration (ECA) to East and South-East Asia; Congress passed a rather low-key China Aid Act in 1948, and in an altogether more influential and ultimately more traumatic programme, provided aid to Korea a year later. 'Point Four' of President Truman's inaugural address in 1949 pledged to extend American scientific and technical expertise to the 'underdeveloped areas' with the dual purpose of serving the humanitarian interests of poorer peoples and enhancing American economic and security interests overseas. With the growing boom in the world economy from 1950 onwards the number of American Aid beneficiaries rose from a handful of countries after the war to sixty in 1959, by which time the other industrialised countries had established extensive aid clienteles of their own. The very overt expansion of American influence provoked a series of Soviet responses, notably the formation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA, or Comecon) in January 1949: 'growing political and economic pressure was being exerted on the socialist countries by the imperialist states which did not wish to reconcile themselves to the loss of their dominating positions in Central and SouthEastern Europe. What actually amounted to a trade and economic blockade of the socialist countries, effected under the guise of the Marshall Plan, was the chief instrument of the policy of the imperialist countries' (Plaksin n.d.: 96). The Russians roundly resented the machinery established to administer the Marshall Plan, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC - which became the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1960, a 'first world' economic policy club); they likewise denounced the European Economic Community (EEC), seeing it as the 'most powerful among the inter-state economic associations organised by the capitalist countries . . . uniting the imperialist forces in their struggle against the socialist world, the mounting working class movement and the dissatisfaction of the masses in the imperialist countries' (op. cit.: 112). Such organisations not only obliged the socialist countries to form counteractive associ22

Techniques for growth ations, they were seen as an assault upon 'the political and economic independence of less developed countries', subordinating 'their national interests to the selfish aims of the huge monopolies of the stronger member countries' (op. cit.: 97). As the Americans formed military pacts around the world, the Russians responded in the spirit of the Cold War, and did likewise. They had eschewed the old League of Nations as a 'Robber Alliance' (Bukharin & Preobrazhensky 1966: 132) initiated but not in fact joined by the USA. During the Second War, American efforts to establish - and commit itself to - a more effective United Nations Organisation engaged the somewhat reluctant attention of the Soviet Union, as a wartime ally. The UN Charter was drawn up at Dumbarton Oaks; a conference at Bretton Woods begat the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD - later the 'World Bank'); and from the Hot Springs conference issued the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) (v. Chronology, Appendix C). As was the case with the British Colonial Development Act of 1945, the aid delivered by the UN organisations demanded from recipient countries coherently planned proposals for investment and allocation. As international and bilateral (country-to-country) aid increased, planning became a major preoccupation of dependent and independent countries of the 'underdeveloped' world, and thus a cardinal credential of viability, respectability, trustworthiness and creditworthiness. The political implications were unmistakable: most donors liked to see strong centralised governments with some kind of 'democratic' legitimacy. The World Bank projected a distinctly American view of the proprieties of development - hardly surprising, since it was modelled on the large American banking corporation, borrowing on the world's capital markets and lending with a studious concern for profit. Accordingly, 'The single most important component of the Bank's development "philosophy" which emerged at the outset, was its firm and pronounced bias in favour of the advantages, not to say virtues, of a free market economy and a system of private ownership and enterprise' (Adler 1972: 34). This disposed the Bank to favour private investment in the developing countries and to pay punctilious attention to loan repayment. It was assumed that these countries would resort to private borrowing as soon as they could, and would not try to force the pace of development (shades of Stalin) by initiating state enterprises. Technical assistance and infrastructure development such as communications and power projects were preferred; not only did this seem to open up future prospects for the countries concerned, it fitted the Bank's concern for specific, computable, circumscribable projects and its allocation of loans essentially to cover foreign exchange costs. 23

History Between 1945 and 1977 the World Bank loaned more than US$38 billion (UN 1979: 365). However, the inability of poorer countries to meet their supposed share of costs obliged the World Bank to take an increased interest in the mobilisation of domestic resources, in the 'fiscal performance of borrowing governments', and ultimately in the capacities of these governments themselves. The Bank has become best known for its procession of Survey and Advisory missions, each with an increasingly broad brief to counsel on national planning, and generating reports which have become key texts in the study and practice of development. Adler remarks that 'the fact that as early as 1951 the Bank endorsed development planning as an important and perhaps even indispensable means of speeding development may need underlining' (1972: 39). In the years of the Cold War and Senator Joseph McCarthy's communist witch-hunt, such an attitude was not easy to justify in the USA, which tended to see itself as shouldering the main costs of the UN: 'approval of planning was considered by many as tantamount to embracing the alien doctrine of socialism . . . and as a not-so-subtle way of stupidly or maliciously interfering with private enterprise' (ibid.). The rationale of Bank officials themselves was that they were not trying to generate or abet centralised, 'Command' economies: 'Planning was necessary to assure that the limited resources available for the financing of infrastructure investment would be put to their best possible use so as to maximise the services which the public sector and privately-owned utilities could render to the public sector, where resources allocation would be determined by private enterprise operating in a market economy' (op. cit.: 40). This justification had a comforting, Keynesian ring to it. Robert Packenham has argued that American post-war successes made change and economic development look deceptively easy, and made it seem that development and American notions of democracy concurred naturally while radicalism and revolution were inherently Bad (1973: 20). Successful development was a matter of technique, whether it was building durable roads in the right places or providing adequate incentives for poor farmers. A suitably businesslike frame of mind could not usefully accommodate political debates or even political scruples: there were too many pressing, practical jobs to do. The overall purpose could be expressed concisely and without evident equivocation: economic growth, and thus industrialisation. The immediate task was to set 'underdeveloped' countries on a path which would as soon as possible enable them to sustain their own growth and develop themselves. Leaders of these countries who, like Stalin, did not wish to get 'left behind' could readily understand and accept such a proposal, and the complex of advisers, aid, loans and plans which it entailed. As a doctrine, the path to self-sustaining growth was propounded most 24

Techniques for growth clearly and most influentially by the American liberal economist, W.W. Rostow. In a series of texts from the early 1950s to the early 1970s he elaborated his theory of the stages of economic growth (see especially Rostow 1960a, 1960b, and 1971) which he described first as 'a dynamic theory of production' (1960a: ch. 13) and then more contentiously as 'A non-communist manifesto' (1960b). The Traditional Society was poor, agricultural, politically fragmented and fatalistically minded; in Rostow's aeronautical imagery, the Preconditions for Take-off were foreign intervention, the development of communications, manufacturing industries, effective government and an upsurge of entrepreneurial zeal. The Takeoffrequired a technological leap, with investment soaring and the entrepreneurs politically in the ascendant; over some twenty-five years, growth would become Self-sustaining. In The Drive to Maturity modern technology would become highly transferable and pervade the whole economy; Rostow offers 'symbolic dates' for this in Britain (1850), the USA (1900), Japan (1940), Russia (1950), and a few other countries (Rostow 1960a: 319; 1960b: xx). So far, it is easy to see a close connection between this theory and, say, the World Bank's interests and activities in the 1940s and 1950s. The remaining stages of growth are in fact of greater relevance to the Mature industrialised economies than the poor countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America: maturity leads to The Age of High Mass Consumption, with high output per capita, the proliferation of services and expanding urbanisation and sub-urbanisation - a rough description of American economy and society. On the next stage, Rostow is disappointingly vague, taking issue with Marx's diagnoses of the crises of and prospects for industrial capitalism; he offers the choice between consolidating and containing democracy, the welfare state and high collective consumption, and an arms race with new and more dramatic forms of imperial expansion. Unlike Marx he does not see the inevitability of a (relatively) happy ending, and concentrates on urging sobriety and perceiving hazards. Meanwhile, for 'the richer societies' there is the pressing problem of 'organizing the planet, as the whole southern half of the globe and China move through the preconditions into take-off and regular growth' (1960a: 328). In these post-war years the emerging social science of planning was dominated by liberal economists, who set and solved the practical and theoretical problems, and devised the standard indices of progress - conspicuously the Gross National Product per capita (pcGNP). By comparison, other branches of social science were mute; and as the capitalist states set about modernising the world about them, the influence of Russia and the other socialist states on the techniques of development planning went into eclipse. 25

History 1950-70: Modernisation

The future of planning in the underdeveloped countries seems secure . . . Although the content of planning varies enormously from one underdeveloped country to another, the idea of planning is accepted and endorsed by almost all. In short, planning has become fashionable. (Griffin & Enos 1970: 221) Assurance for this could be found in a 1968 World Bank survey of 1,250 long-, medium- and short-term plans from a list of 210 countries (Waterston 1965: 587ff .)• At the same time Hanson, in his critical study of India's five-year plans, observed laconically that 'After controversial and spectacular beginnings in the Russia of the 1920s and a rather chequered history, the idea of economic planning has become generally accepted. It now excites comparatively little enthusiasm and provokes intransigent opposition only from a few die-hards' (1966: 1). By the mid-1960s national planning had acquired, by its elaboration in almost every country in the world, some general characteristics. It was accepted as both inevitable and necessary, a rational means of coming to grips with change in the twentieth century and with problems of industrial growth. Accordingly, it had become highly technical, its procedural wisdom both increasingly elaborate and increasingly standardised. In the scientific spirit it sought to define, regulate and replicate its successes, and to eliminate its failures. The objects of planning - 'backward economies', 'peasants', 'growth' - were formalised and reified in the effort to make them more manipulable. While consciously seeking to be more orderly in their own procedures planners were also intent on reorganising the economies and societies on which they worked. The power to realise these ambitions made planning both dependent upon and an expression of centralised political authority. Planning became a credential of and a necessity for independent statehood and was therefore truly an international affair. For all countries, development implied increasing external intervention and greater involvement in a worldwide economy. Within each state, the acceptance of planning by the political leadership both evoked and depended upon public consensus that resources and effort invested today would be justified by improved welfare tomorrow; the exercise both demonstrated and generated national democratic processes. Although planning acquired a high degree of procedural similarity throughout the world, broad ideological schisms remained. However, for at least two decades after the war, planned development was dominated by distinctively liberal ideals and by what those in the socialist camp might term 'bourgeois social science' - most notably the 'neo-classical' variety of economics. In the summary description of these ideals in the paragraph 26

Modernisation above, there is some indication of the vexing tendency of planning to presume the conditions of its own fulfilment: it was both inevitable and necessary; it both expressed and required strong government; it evoked and depended upon public consensus. These ambiguities recur in the doctrine-cum-theory of Modernisation which served as a framework for both the analysis and practice of national planning during these two important decades of economic growth. The tone is (from the perspective of the disillusioned 1980s) one of remarkable confidence: 'One of the most modern techniques of a l l . . . planning involves the formulation and interrelation of society's goals and the systematic determination of the various ways and extent to which these goals can be attained' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 19). In the post-war spirit of reconstruction, generalised philosophical concern for human progress was largely replaced by the notion of Modernisation as an inexorable, irreversible, but manipulable evolutionary force. The devising of efficient techniques for stimulating and controlling it took precedence over contemplation of its direction and long-term consequences. The liberal democratic philosophy of free men competing in free markets, with their interests mediated by strong representative government, was, nevertheless, profoundly implicit in notions of Modernisation, and duly became a 'sustaining, reinforcing, legitimizing influence'. To a very great extent', Packenham remarks, 'the theories were ideas which reflected the liberal tradition and thus helped to maintain it' (1973: 253). When history in due course offered a broader perspective on Modernisation theories, they tended to be given the explanatory label 'evolutionary functionalism\ Societies were seen as evolving around core processes of industrialisation and urbanisation, differences among them gradually dissolving while at the same time their scale and the complexity of their division of social labour increased. Planning with its aggregate economic terms was a rational, managerial response to these changes, one of the main mechanisms by which progress and social order could be reconciled. The notion of order lay at the heart of the functional aspects of Modernisation; as an extension of earlier organic images, 'societies' were seen as systemic entities, a mass of component parts comprising societal 'wholes'. Healthy, functioning societies were continually trying to eliminate disorder and accommodate modern elements; those which could not adjust were, in Darwinian terms, selected-out. The idea of balance and equilibrium is at the roots of neo-classical economic models - the prevailing influence in social science in this period. The key term is integration, still one of the most overworked words in planning: parts are explained in terms of their place in an overall whole, and wholes are explained in terms of their component parts. As we shall see, an adequate understanding of causes can be very difficult to achieve in a framework where arguments 27

History tend to become circular, and where the diverse nature of the 'parts' and the boundaries of the 'whole' cannot be defined with sufficient clarity. Modernisation theories sought to reconcile these essentially static images of social order with dynamic, evolutionary images of change. The relentless thrust of modernisation posed problems of functional adaptation, which some societies coped with better than others (see Herskovits 1952: 86-7). In general, global terms, change was conceptualised as a shift from state to state, from one kind of society to another. The precedents for these models were already well established in the work of Spencer, Durkheim, Maine, Toennies, Weber and others, and probably the most influential twentieth-century version was elaborated by Talcott Parsons. He identified a series of interacting factors ('pattern variables') each describing an aspect of the shift towards the more complex, differentiated, individualistic and specialised 'modern' society. As more aspects of this shift were identified and analysed, a compound model of change emerged in which 'real' societies were seen as distributed between two polar types of society, the traditional and the modern. Two contraposed lists of different aspects of social organisation emerged, e.g.: Tradition Modernity Community Society Agriculture Industry Rural Urban Particularistic Universalistic Low need for achievement High need for achievement etc. As each opposition was expounded and added to the list, a coherent relationship among the very diverse aspects of society in each list was presumed: traditional society was rural, village-bound, unambitious and so on. At the level of the individual, the diverse indices of modernisation constituted a 'syndrome' - 'such that having one modern characteristic . . . would quite regularly be associated with manifesting the other modern characteristics' (Inkeles & Smith 1964: 84). From this it was easy to conclude that 'the modern man is a cross-national, transcultural type' (op. cit.: 118; italicised in original). In this formula, the real societies of the world were seen as virtually all in transition from the 'traditional' cluster of characteristics to the 'modern', their relative progress along the parameters of modernisation accounting in large measure for the empirically observable differences among them. Taken with Rostow's image of stages of growth, development planning could readily be seen as a mediating and expediting device in the transition to modernity (the unilateral thrust of this is very plain: planning was definitely not concerned with 'traditionalisation' -whatever 28

Modernisation that might be). Bold schematic accounts of Modernisation such as Smelser's (1963) were read and absorbed by planners, and their own activities in turn became part of the field of enquiry into Modernisation processes. Both planners and academics tried to come to grips with the intransigent, tradition-bound peasant, and both gradually came to the view that Modernisation would be an uphill task: 'My review of the literature reveals an essentially negative picture of peasants', Everett Rogers declared, adding: 'the reader should be forewarned lest he assume that the author's review implies a wholehearted endorsement of such a stereotype' - peasants could and would be changed (1970: 112). However, the 'ten central elements' which comprised Rogers' 'subculture of peasantry' were as much moral pronouncements as scientific categories: mutual distrust, a lack of innovativeness, fatalism, low levels of aspiration, an inability to save and defer gratification, limited time-perspectives, a selfish preoccupation with family welfare, dependency upon government authority, 'localiteness' (parochialism) and a lack of empathy (an egocentred perspective on the social world) (Rogers 1970: 115). The notion of integration, the fabric of order in society, extended vertically and horizontally through all levels from the state to the village, and provided much scope for analytical confusion. However, in analysis integration could always be reduced to its morphological base in the behaviour of the individual: the empirical actuality of change was the exercise of individual choice in the increasingly complex and diversified structure of modernising society. Again, causality tended to be circular: in aggregate terms, individual choices expressed themselves in changing social structure, and social structures in turn provided the framework for individual choice. Economic planners were thus concerned with restructuring individual choice, but were obliged to labour within the framework of existing, less modern economic structures. Effective change involved shifting individuals from the nexus of traditional characteristics to the modern; thus, in functional terms, a decision to accept mechanised cashcrop farming would oblige the individual to adapt all other aspects of his life to modern ways. Similarly, an acceptance of modern ideas through the agency of educational programmes, the mass media or agricultural extension work would oblige the farmer to accept mechanised cash-crop farming - or so it was hoped. Transition and adaptation could be envisaged more readily in terms of the physical movement of individuals from the subsistence farming community to the market-dominated urban society. For economists this was a concrete 'inter-sectoral' shift which could be catered for very explicitly in macro-planning, and treated analytically as the characteristically dual economy of the underdeveloped country. In the post-war years migration 29

History became a central object of enquiry in social science, and sociologists had much to say about the traumas of this modernising trend from the perspective of the individuals involved. The implication that progressive change brought increasing pressure on individuals to 'make up their minds' rationally was a basic tenet of modernisation theories. The cumulative effect of such choices could be seen in the rational structures of modern society at large; Max Weber and, more directly, Talcott Parsons were responsible for this particular emphasis and, probably more by accident than intention, the anthropologists found themselves increasingly associated with contrasting images of the culturally automated, rather mindless 'traditional7 society. Behaviour was 'there' mainly because it performed certain necessary social functions and served to maintain necessary social structures. In Modernisation, innovative ideas were a fundamental object of enquiry, and the saliently new ideas of the entrepreneur, upon whom economic growth in society at large ultimately depended, were of cardinal interest to economic planners. At first, the logic of the market-place seemed irresistible, even to an anthropologist: 'With the attraction of a market, a peasant farmer usually becomes quite "rational". When he finds it is cheaper to hire a few hardworking peons instead of paying for food and drink for a large number of fiesta-minded friends, he is ready to let this aspect of tradition slip into the past' (Foster 1962: 35). That peasants very commonly would not let 'tradition' slip into the past so easily, became a major hazard in planned rural development. Neither technical manipulation nor promises of future wealth were sufficient to make peasants respond rationally to economic opportunities, and the assumption that they would do so began to look absurdly optimistic, or a projection into the underdeveloped world of those protestant-bolstered attitudes which Weber had argued were a distinctive feature of the rise of capitalism in the West (Weber 1930). Nevertheless, the stubbornness of the peasant became, to the progressively minded planner, one of the principal obstacles confronting development techniques. Obstacle was a much-used word in the 1950s and 1960s; obstacles were what stood in the way of rational techniques and rational policies for development, and the principal offender - as Rogers and others made clear - was 'traditional culture'. The loss of many of the prettier aspects of tradition was the cost of promoting greater efficiency and equity in the economy at large, because traditional ideas were qualitatively different from those of the ambitious, profit-maximising entrepreneur who played such a conspicuous role in Rostow's scheme of growth. George Foster, for example, revealed as an obstacle to development the 'peasant image of limited good' (1962), the idea that peasants viewed village life as a zero30

Modernisation sum game which discouraged people from acquiring more wealth, prestige etc. than others, and thus constrained the emergence of entrepreneurs. Such obstacles became part of the essentially technical challenge of development, and direct efforts were made to capture the imagination of farmers by such devices as the 'demonstration effect', whereby 'progressive farmers' were selected in particular areas and given intensive advice and capital assistance in the hope that they would serve as models for their neighbours. More often than not, the neighbours were impressed only by the inequity of such an approach; efforts to devise whole 'demonstration communities' usually had a similar effect, some of them quite literally going up in smoke. The interrelationships among planning techniques, liberalism, democracy, and notions of consensus are complex, and pervade the literature of this period. Robert Packenham has argued a close relationship between American interests in the developing world and its own 'singular and relatively happy history' of democracy and capitalism (1973:20). For politicians in the USA, the American experience was a quite explicit model for the rest of the world; for academics, the assumption was much more implicit. The Cold War and American fears for the expansion of communism accentuated certain features of the Modernising mission: notable among these were the concern for 'openness', (the right kind of) education, and better opportunities for the exercise of individual choice. These were central preoccupations of the communications theorist Richard Meier, for example: in his book on Developmental Planning (1965), Meier construed development in terms of the accessibility of traditional society to extraneous, diffusing, modernising influences. Planning, which was 'intended to create a wider range of choice for individuals and groups' (op. cit.: 394; italicised in original) depended on 'open' sentiments and structures within which external agencies - especially international business concerns - could root themselves (ibid.: 62). The role of education was vital: 'The developing society must draw upon a worldwide fund of knowledge, much of which is intrinsically alien to traditional ways of thinking (op. cit.: 264; italicised in original). For Meier, the metaphor for modernisation was botanical: pollination, seeding, etc. (op. cit.: 39ff.), unlike the aeronautical imagery of Rostow and others. The desire to equate planned development and democracy is a persistent theme of the 1950s and 1960s: the first Indian Plan was presented as evidence of 'democratic process', although at the same time its success was deemed to depend on a greater degree of democratic consensus (Hanson 1966: 91). S.K. Nath, an Indian advocate of balanced growth, insisted that 'not only are centralized planning and democracy not opposed to each other, but they are in fact essential for each other's full success. If the majority of people of a country believe this, the case for 31

History balanced growth is as strong as ever' (1971: 309). To be democratic, Inkeles roundly insisted, was to be truly modern (1966: 142). The problem for the evolutionary functionalist was that these liberal ideals were far removed from observable reality. It was necessary to recognise that modernisation was rather more likely to generate unhappiness, violence or tyranny than social harmony: The fact that modernisation entails continual changes in all major spheres of a society means of necessity that it involves processes of disorganization and dislocation, with the continual development of social problems, cleavages and conflicts between various groups, and movements of protest, resistance to change. Disorganization and dislocation thus constitute a basic part of modernization, and every modern and modernizing society has to cope with them. (Eisenstadt 1966: 20)

Contemplation of this pathological phase generated a new version of an old debate among development planners. The optimists saw themselves as easing traditional societies gradually towards modernity; among economists this approach became known as balanced growth. Largely through the influence of its main proponents (Lewis, Rosenstein-Rodan, Nurkse and others) it has become the most durable creed of the World Bank and other national and international agencies. Norman Long has called it the 'improvement approach', to be distinguished from the 'transformation approach' favoured by other economists (1977: 145ff.). More impatient, the latter would see development as necessarily disequilibrating, and the idea of balanced growth as a contradiction in terms (v. Nath 1971). Whether they favoured a gradual or a more draconian approach, economists could agree that effective development planning depended on a strong authoritative state structure. This, for the political scientist Huntington, was the heart of the matter: 'The most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government' (1968: 1). If the transition to modernity proved traumatic, it was largely because the state could not cope: 'The most general characteristic of situations of breakdown in the political sphere was a marked discrepancy between the demands of different groups and the responses and ability of the central rulers to deal with these demands' (Eisenstadt 1966: 134). This returns us to the equation of modernisation, control and democracy: for Eisenstadt, modern society has, by definition, strong centralised political institutions and a 'mass consensual orientation', with well-developed 'change-absorbing institutions' (op. cit.: 15). 'The various provisions for orderly change of rulers as embodied in the system of election of constitutional or multi-party regimes are perhaps the most important examples of such institutional mechanisms oriented to absorption of change' (opt. cit.: 39). Thus, 32

Modernisation orderly development was seen to depend on state structures which transcended the authority of particular regimes, which expressed popular will through representative democratic institutions, and which were therefore saliently different from the USSR or China. If 'modern' society looked very much like the American Dream, it could always be argued that America was plainly the world's most industrialised country, and development was quintessentially industrialisation. It could be represented, in both historical and functional terms, as a homogeneous force, obliging many different societies throughout the world to adapt to it, and not vice versa. In a celebrated comparative study W. J. Goode argued the 'fif between industrialisation and the ubiquity of the small, mobile and relatively independent conjugal family (1963). A number of sociologists sought to spell out what this industrial vector actually was; for example: Certain features of the modern factory are relatively invariant, and they communicate the same message, no matter what the cultural setting in which they may be installed. In them there is always an intense concentration of physical power brought to bear on the transformation of raw materials; orderly and routine procedures to govern the flow of work are essential; time is a powerful influence in guiding the work process; power and authority generally rest on technological competence. In addition, a factory guided by modern management and personnel activities will set its workers an example of rational behavior, emotional balance, open communication, and respect for opinions, the feelings and the dignity of the worker which can be a powerful example of the principles and practice of modern living. (Inkeles 1966: 149)

Clark Kerr and others have made even more extravagant claims for benign, modernising industrialism. It eventually subsumes and displaces ideology and conflict: The age of ideology fades . . . An age of realism has taken its place - an age in which there is little expectation of either utter perfection or complete doom . . . The negotiator takes the place of the prophet, the idealist, the demagogue . . . The administrators become increasingly benevolent and increasingly skilled . . . The benevolent political bureaucracy and the benevolent economic oligarchy are matched with the more tolerant mass . . . Consensus develops wherever industrialization is successful. . . ' etc. (Kerr et al. 1973: 264-6). The main purpose of these and similar assertions is to explain how and why Modernisation, commencing in so many different social contexts, is a convergent process. An altogether more sober, indeed monumental effort to explain this can be found in M. J. Levy's Modernization and the Structure of Societies (1966): As the level of modernization increases, the level of structural uniformity among relatively modernized societies continually increases regardless of how diverse the original basis from which change took place in these societies may have been. In other words, the more modernized relatively modernized societies become, 33

History the more they resemble one another . . . Not only do relatively modernized societies tend to become more similar to one another as modernization progresses, but endemic in relatively modernized societies, if they are at all stable, is a constant increase in the level of modernization, (op. cit.: 711)

Levy illustrates this in a diagram, reminiscent of those expounding Rostow's stages of growth: the rising graph lines of 'relative Modernisation' in Russia, Japan, Britain and the USA disappear into an occluded area which begins in the year 2000, and re-emerge united at point 'M' (for Modernity) in year '2000+n' (op. cit.: 712). Gellner has remarked, apropos this kind of absurdity, that To evolve hopefully is now much more interesting than to arrive; indeed the arrival-point seems almost to matter only in that it provides a direction for the journey' (1964: 9). In convergence theories, the teleology is further weakened by a studious insistence that its actuality - what the morphology of the future global social monotype actually is - cannot be spelled out. The point laboured by Levy, Goode and others is that societies have not converged yet and the outcome is thus unknown: nevertheless, societies as we observe them today are behaving as if they are converging on such a monotype. That this will look decidedly American is an innuendo they would sternly resist. For the evolutionary functionalist planned development - the pursuit of modernisation by strong, technically capable and democratically responsible states - is essentially an excursion into the unknown. Planners and others concerned with the immediate problems of development have certainly been more concerned with 'evolving hopefully' rather than distressing themselves, their governments, the peasants or anyone else with detailed speculation about the ultimate meaning of 'M'. Packenham observes that in American aid programmes the focus has been on 'means and techniques, which were highly controversial, rather than ends and goals, which tended to be taken much more for granted' (1973: 116). It is curious that development planning in the socialist states has likewise been preoccupied with means and techniques, although this is not because the future is seen as indeterminable; rather that, with official assurance, it is seen as predetermined by material laws of history. With the emphasis on techniques, the processes of planning took on many of the characteristics of that Modern society towards which it strove: homogeneity, control, comprehensiveness and, perhaps above all, integration: 'In a well-constructed plan . . . there is a reason for every number and a close relationship between them all. Each in principle is consistent with and necessary for every other. The greatest or most aggregative number is interrelated with the least or most disaggregative' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 53). At the heart of every respectable planning exercise were econometric models, increasingly elaborate, voracious for 34

The Third World - Us and Them data, seeking to subsume all aspects of the economy, and fiercely arguedover by those with sufficient esoteric knowledge to comprehend their ramifying schemata. In theory, a plan should be comprehensive, consistent and optimal, but in practice none of these conditions is ever met' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 196). Planning was also subject to much the same kinds of ambiguity which beset Modernisation theories, to inconsistencies between ideas and ideals on the one hand and observable reality on the other. At the same time as Man was trying to make sense of, and take some authoritative control over the world of the mid-twentieth century, the world itself was moving on and unfolding historical patterns of its own. Among them was an emerging dualism which proved much more vexatious and every bit as complex as the contrast between tradition and modernity: between the rich and the poor, the intellectuals and the laymen, the planners and the planned, between - in crude terms - 'us' and 'them', there opened up a gulf of mutual incomprehension and conflicting interest. 1950-70: The Third World - Us and Them

In the two decades after the Second War, the growing boom in the western industrial economies and the Cold War with the Soviet bloc both provided a stimulus for development in the poor countries of the world. The wealthier countries of East and West competed for the loyalties of the emerging nations as well as for their raw materials and markets. By the early 1960s 'development' had become something more than a technical exercise and, under the influence of American economists like Rostow, the primitive 'conspicuous giving' of aid had become a strategic, costconscious business. The recipients of American aid had to look economically viable as well as politically reliable, and efficient development planning could be taken as an expression of both these virtues. In 1950, shortly after retiring as the first Director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, Lord Boyd Orr warned the wealthy countries of the 'free world' that communism spreads where hunger prevails; a decade later President Kennedy was expressing much the same sentiment, albeit more palliatively: 'Economic growth and political democracy can develop hand in hand' (Packenham 1973: 59). For the increasing number of newly independent countries, building the state and planning development had become urgent, interrelated tasks. In the expanding international arena, planning had become both a credential and a manipulative device, but it was also a means by which each regime could express to its subject population its will, its identity, and its active concern for progress. Without nationhood, without authoritative links between the mass of the people and the new and often 35

History fragile state structures, orderly progress was impossible. Van Arkadie has remarked that the nationalist movements, pressing for independence from colonial rule, did much to make planning fashionable (1979: 572); as was the case with Nehru, many looked ideologically and procedurally to Soviet precedents but very generally the new governments picked up and perpetuated the forms of planning established by their colonial predecessors. If anyone believed that Independence would by itself bring Modernisation, they were soon to be disillusioned: 'Nationalism has provided a cause which induces hundreds of thousands of people to sacrifice their careers and even their lives, but it does not seem to be the kind of force that makes farmers more efficient' (Meier 1965: 27). Independence made the need for rapid, organised development more, rather than less urgent. 'Nation-building' became an internationally authorised priority; while the United Nations Organisation and regional groupings like the Organisation of African Unity (O AU) guaranteed the autonomy and integrity of the new geo-political units, each country confronted the task of bonding often diverse populations to single national power-centres. The new, prosperous and integrated ideal world could at least be visualised in the form of a national plan, which became both a necessity and an act of faith, 'a symbol of emancipation from colonial status, an instrument for achieving economic self-determination, and a harbinger of future prosperity' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 221). In terms of quantity, the 1960s may prove to have been a decade without rival in the history of national planning. The fervour of new states like Ghana and Singapore seems to have encouraged older, but still poor states like Bolivia and Thailand to draw up ambitious plans of their own and to pursue international aid. While the superpowers strove to control the expanding international arena, the poorer countries were already making their presence felt as a coherent force in world affairs. In January 1951 the UN rejected an appeal by twelve Asian and Arab nations for an end to the Korean war. Four years later representatives of twenty-nine African and Asian countries met at Bandung in Indonesia and declared their 'positive neutrality' in world affairs. Although this emerging Third World bloc did not have much immediate influence, the Bandung conference proved in the long term to be a major watershed: it provided a basis for economic and political alliances among poorer countries, and gave them something of that 'power of invidious sanction' noted by Erasmus (1961: 329). Certainly, it was becoming apparent that the developing countries were developing minds of their own: uncomfortably close to American shores, the Cubans chose a revolutionary paradigm for change in 1959. If this gave the Russians cause for satisfaction they were much less pleased by the distinctly independent line pursued by China. The 'Great Leap Forward' (1958-60) and the later, more drastic process of the Cultural 36

The Third World - Us and Them Revolution provided an awesome example of what a massive, impoverished country could do for itself. The feeling that 'neo-colonialism' was an even greater threat than colonialism prompted many nationalist leaders to seek more independent, authentic programmes for development; a range of 'indigenous socialisms' appeared in Asia and Africa, many of them seeking a compromise between Communist and Liberal paradigms, and many looking retrospectively to images of the traditional society which had been displaced by colonialism. The version elaborated by Sekou Toure of Guinea and Nkrumah of Ghana was avowedly PanAfrican, while in his doctrine of ujamaa vijijini Julius Nyerere sought to inspire the peoples of Tanzania with images of their own, authentic traditions of communal village life (v. Kitching 1982: 63-70). Nyerere's Arusha Declaration of February 1967 spelled out this ideology as a basis for Tanzania's Second Five-Year Plan (1969-74). Tanganyika (as it then was) responded to the 1945 Colonial Development and Welfare Act with a Ten-Year Plan, quite typical of the many which were being produced at the time (Westcott 1981: 16-17). This was followed by a Five-Year Plan starting in 1955,and then a Three-Year plan which took the country up to Independence and union with Zanzibar in 1964. The First Five-Year Plan (1964-9) was drawn up for Tanzania by a 'small international team of planners' (Van Arkadie 1972: 91) and with the advice of a World Bank mission (1960). The problems of implementing this plan resulted in a spate of advisory missions and a growing conviction in the mind of Nyerere that real progress should be guided by authentically Tanzanian ideas. These were summarised at the beginning of the Second Plan: The Second Five-Year Plan presents a detailed programme which aims to implement the principles set out in the Arusha Declaration. The philosophy of the Plan therefore incorporates five principles: (i) Social equality - The Plan aims to spread the benefits of development widely throughout society; (ii) Ujamaa - The Plan emphasises the development of forms of economic activity which encourage collective and co-operative efforts and avoid wide differences of wealth and income; (iii) Self reliance - The Plan emphasises development through the maximum mobilization of domestic resources, particularly through mobilization of the people; (iv) Economic and Social Transformation - The Plan emphasises rapid expansion of productive capacity to create the basis for future economic and social transformation; (v) African economic integration - The Plan emphasises the extension of economic co-operation with other African states. (United Republic of Tanzania 1969: 1) If, in retrospect, this seems rather conventional it may be because it has inspired a good deal of imitation. The novelty of insisting that a develop37

History ment plan requires authentic and explicit 'philosophical' foundations even more than it needs detailed technical apparatus - may be seen from a comparison with earlier plans. The equivalent summary paragraph from the 1961-2 to 1963-4 Development Plan for Tanganyika reads as follows: The main theme of the plan is the laying of the foundations for future growth. The main objectives of the plan are the development of agriculture and livestock industry with its subsidiary task of water development and irrigation, the development of road system and the development of secondary and technical education. But industrial and mineral development is also important and so provision is made in the plan for a Development Corporation and for mineral surveys and geological mapping. Most of the other provisions in the plan represent either the continuation of existing plans (medical services, police force, etc.), or the implications of achieving independence (army, foreign service, etc.). (Tanganyika 1962: 13)

The changing language of planning in countries like Tanzania reflected an increasing concern about foreign economic and political intervention, and about the very mixed blessings of aid and technical assistance. In the period of post-war recovery and boom, an increasing number of wealthy countries followed the American example and established international aid programmes of their own. Agencies for overseas development were established in the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Canada, and many other countries, and by 1965 the annual flow of aid from rich to poor countries exceeded $7 billions - still less than 1% of the income of the donor countries. From the perspective of a country like India, the increase in the number of donors is as striking as the amount of aid donated (see Figure 1.1). 'Less developed countries know that they have a better chance of attracting foreign financial assistance if they have development plans' (Waterston 1965: 103). It could also be said that recipient countries need development plans if they are to impose some order on the imbroglio of international aid. The World Bank has noted that most developing countries are deficient in this respect; in its report on Kenya in 1975 it pointed out that there were only five professionals co-ordinating an aid Figure 1.1. Aid to India, 1951-65 Period: Number of aid donors Total aid received (millions of rupees)

First plan (1951-5)

Second plan (1956-60)

Third plan (1961-5)

7

14

21

3,818

25,335

28,865

Source: From Streeten & Hill 1968: table 2, 328. 38

The Third World - Us and Them programme exceeding $100 millions annually. 'Packaging Projects for Donors' - establishing a degree of coherence between domestic needs and foreign aid interests - is a planning need which grows in proportion to the amount of aid received (IBRD 1975: 408). On occasions donors have felt obliged to intervene directly and in concert in national development planning: a conference of dissatisfied donors obliged the highly dependent government of Lesotho to excise the Agricultural chapter from the country's Third Five-Year Plan (1980-5), and replace it with a separate 'Blueprint for Action' emphasising project co-ordination (Kingdom of Lesotho 1981b). The complexity of the aid market is reflected in its own elaborate lexicon - procurement tying, rescheduling, the 'pipeline' etc. (v. Streeten & Hill 1968: 323-7), and in the inevitable professionalisation of aid advice. We discuss the importance of international aid for both donors and recipients more fully in Appendix A. Perhaps the most important influence on American foreign aid policy was its ever-increasing commitment to war in Korea and Indo-China. Apart from the technical and administrative expertise acquired by waging war in distant and often inhospitable lands, the strategic importance of economic assistance became clearly apparent. Outlining its 'Mutual Security Program' in 1958, the US Department of State declared that Technical Assistance should serve both the basic interests of the cooperating countries, and in varying degrees, the primary foreign policy interests of the United States: Our moral interest in helping less fortunate people to improve their lot; our economic interest in having prosperous and progressive nations as sources of raw materials and markets for our goods; our political interests in having stable, friendly, and democratically inclined neighbours in the world community; and our strategic interest in having the nations of the free world strong and determined to resist aggression. (Packenham 1973: 54-5) These interests of the Eisenhower administration were rephrased by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations (1961-3, 1963-9) in the 'Diplomacy for Democracy' approach to development aid - while the war in Vietnam continued to escalate towards its traumatic conclusion. In 1961, President Kennedy forged his 'Alliance for Progress' among the 'Western Hemisphere Nations'. Seen by some as an effort to consolidate the US hegemony over the Latin American states, the Alliance sought to coordinate economic and political development; its efforts to foster both growth and democracy received many setbacks, notably a string of six military coups d'etat in 1962 and 1963. Kennedy's 1961 Foreign Assistance Act was undoubtedly of greater and more durable significance. It established the new Agency for International Development and, by way of a series of policy amendments, provided the basis for American development initiatives for the next twenty 39

History years. One of these amendments, Title IX of 1966, insisted on the 'utilization of democratic institutions in development' and placed a specific obligation on US AID to pursue the political goals of stimulating 'popular participation' through such respectable devices as cooperative societies and local councils with elected representatives (Packenham 1973: 99100). 'Economic growth and political democracy', declared President Kennedy, reiterating a familiar theme, 'can develop hand in hand' (op. cit.: 59). One of the most contentious sections of the 1961 Act was number 116, which specified that aid should not be given to countries in which human rights were being violated - unless it could be conveyed directly to the poor themselves. In his 1977 Foreign Aid Act, President Carter bravely insisted on this clause, at the cost of alienating America's more right-wing allies in Latin America; the Reagan administration abrogated this policy in 1981. Since the bulk of international aid is provided by the industrial capitalist countries, its conditions are viewed with some anxiety by many of the recipients, and with considerable scepticism by the major socialist states. The soviet bloc began to compete in the Third World aid game only in 1956 (v. White 1974: 204ff.) but by 1970 the CMEA group were assisting forty-eight Asian, African and Latin American countries, preferring to see this as 'cooperation' and a bulwark against the intrusions of imperialism in the Third World (Plaksin n.d.: 139, 27). Russian attitudes to aid are decidedly ambivalent, insisting on the virtues of 'rapid growth' in the poor countries, encouraging trade and production agreements, but viewing these as healthy symptoms of 'Proletarian Internationalism' (op. cit.: 17). 'Planned trade between the socialist countries places the world socialist market in an indisputably advantageous position as compared with the spontaneous, unplanned capitalist foreign commerce. For planned trade ensures the deliberate, purposeful and consequently more efficient international division of labour'(op. cit.: 32). As an apology for foreign assistance this is hardly more convincing than the development 'strategies' of the western countries - particularly as the spirit of 'Proletarian Internationalism' evidently extended in 1970 to unlikely regimes in Brazil and Iran (op. cit.: 136-7). The precedent of its own planning experience has probably been the most potent contribution which Russia has made to the development of the post-war world. Among the socialist countries the Chinese experience has been singular in almost every respect. After receiving Russian assistance, much of it for strategic purposes, from 1950 to 1959, the Chinese eschewed almost all foreign aid until after the fall of the 'Gang of Four' in 1977. However, between 1970 and 1974 China had committed itself to donating US$2,400 millions of foreign aid, most of it in the form of long-term, low-interest loans (R. Berger 1979: 196). In 1964 Chou En-lai, on a visit to Africa, 40

The Third World - Us and Them propounded the 'Eight Principles' of Chinese aid: its use in the struggle against imperialism, its respect for local sovereignty, its concern for quality, efficiency and the training of local personnel, and - very attractive to recipient countries - its 'soft' terms; furthermore the Chinese experts, unlike their jet-set western counterparts, were to live humbly and receive no special privileges. The 'Great Uhuru Railway' is undoubtedly China's most impressive aid venture, the construction of a vital and strategic line of communication from the coast of Tanzania through to the Zambian copperbelt. The project had been considered for a long time, but the Chinese interest was first established during President Nyerere's visit to Peking in 1965. The unilateral declaration of independence by Rhodesia in the same year, and the consequent closure of the border with Zambia and the breakdown of aid relationships with Britain and other western countries, helped to clinch the deal in July 1970. For China, the Tanzam railway provided an opportunity to demonstrate its own style of development on the grand scale: the 1,155 miles of track had been laid over extremely difficult terrain by July 1976, at a cost of about $400 millions. The Africans were lavish in their praise; Zambia was being assisted by a country with a pcGNP half its own. The Chinese venture differed from familiar forms of bilateral and multilateral aid in many respects; it was funded with a high proportion of locally incurred costs and was very labour-intensive: 45,000 Africans worked with 15,000 Chinese, who impressed their hosts by their industry and frugal living. Here was a demonstration of that Other style of development, meticulous in its organisation, discipline and ideological commitment, for which the world's most populous country had become famous. As political strategy it was self-effacing, but no less effective for that (M. Bailey 1979). China's development experience serves as a cogent, if complex, illustration of the distinction we seek to draw in this book (see especially Chapter 2) between planning as a remarkably uniform set of structures and processes, ideology as a means of establishing symbolic relationships between people and the state, and policy as the highly contingent development intentions of particular states which it is the function of planning to organise and translate into action. Plainly, policy is constrained in many ways: by available resources and political capacities, by emphasis on agriculture or industry, by access to domestic or external sources of investment, and so on. If Chinese policy has varied considerably since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, its commitment to planning has remained resolute, and an important component of Chinese understanding of democracy: 'In their planning policies the Chinese start from the assumption that without a central and over-all national plan it is impossible to organize the economy to serve the interests of the whole working people; the industrial workers and the 41

History peasants. "By over-all planning," said Mao in 1957, "we mean planning which takes into consideration the interests of the 600 million people of our country" ' (R. Berger 1979: 181). Both the form and content of China's First Five-Year Plan (1953-7) were directly inspired by Russian experience, but it soon became evident that a Stalinist squeeze on agriculture simply would not work in China, with its very different endowments of land and labour. In 1956 Mao argued 'that it was necessary for China to pay greater attention to agriculture and light industry, not to squeeze the peasants too hard, to give greater power to local organs, make less use of repression, not to slavishly copy the USSR and to admit weaknesses' (Ellman 1979: 29). Particularly after the damaging effects of the 'Great Leap Forward' (1958-60), China has invested domestic resources and foreign exchange heavily in agriculture, despite its declining contribution to the domestic product (Perkins 1975: 143). In a characteristic inventory, Mao laid down 'Ten Major Relationships' which policy must resolve in the continuing process of development: heavy industry, and light industry and agriculture; industry on the coast and in the interior; construction for defence and for economic development; the state, production units and individual producers (the 'mass line' in the planning process); central and local authorities; the Han majority and minority nationals; Party and non-Party; revolution and counter-revolution; right and wrong; and China and other countries (see R. Berger 1979: 170-4). For Mao, this list was an application of the 'law of contradiction', an image of the perpetual shift among the ingredients of policy between 'balance-imbalance-new balance' (op. cit.: 187). Taken together with the 'Five Unifiers' which we shall discuss in Chapter 2 (see p. 101), the 'Ten Major Relationships' represent an attempt to systematise policy formation, and render it more amenable to the technical processes of planning. If Russian development policy was found not to fit Chinese circumstances, there is even less reason to suppose that Chinese policy could be replicated in the diverse economies of the Third World. What became known as China's 'alternative path' to development became an object of acute interest in the outside world in the 1960s and early 1970s. The introversion of this approach was part of its attraction: Chinese attitudes were a criticism of the hegemony of the rich countries in organising development worldwide, a criticism which extended beyond complaints about material predations to moral and intellectual dissatisfaction with ideas about development emanating from the West. However, the exclusiveness of the Chinese 'path' made it very difficult for foreign observers to see beyond the level of ideology and to evaluate details of policy. Careful study of such evidence as was available did indicate, however, that the substance of Chinese planning was not readily transferable to other 42

The rise of Development Studies developing countries (see for example Dernberger & Le Gall 1980). Nevertheless, the 'authenticity' of the Chinese approach remained an inspiration to those outsiders dissatisfied with 'Europocentric' ideas of development: 'The only true advantage of the latecomers in the race for development might well be the possibility that they still have of rejecting existing models and of defining themselves by opposing them, of creating, in other words, original blueprints' (Sachs 1976: 191). Much intellectual effort has been expended on the search for alternative visions of progress, more in keeping with nationalist sentiments in Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Arab world: indeed, this quest has been sponsored by the new United Nations University. Foreign admirers were nonplussed by the apparent ease with which China shed its exclusive ideology and reversed many of its established policies after the death of Mao. The new leadership proposed 'Four Modernisations' as its recipe for progress, altering substantially patterns of investment and management in both agriculture and industry. The liberalisation of rhetoric and policy, and the desire to return to the mainstream of world development, has evoked serious debate about whether China is about to 'go capitalist' (see Cheung 1982). However, it is increasingly evident that these dramatic shifts have not been accompanied by significant changes in the fabric of the Chinese state. Nor has the revision of ideology and policy diminished the importance of planning, or modified its basic structures and processes. Initially, pursuit of the Four Modernisations was marked by an intensification of centralised planning, but more recently there has been a return to the emphasis on decentralisation of decision making. The 'authenticity' of Chinese development plainly rests more in this durable apparatus than in its overt programmes for change - that distinctive 'path' which by now must look too devious to be recommended with any confidence to other poor countries as a reliable route to progress. The 1960s: The rise of Development Studies

One of the most striking features of the 1960s is the arrival on the development scene of the academic. In both the industrialised and newly independent states, academic institutions were expanding vigorously, and within organisations like the World Bank 'an unprecedented outburst of intellectual interest in the process of economic development occurred. It produced an avalanche of studies, new concepts and new methods of analysis' (Adler 1972: 41). By the end of the decade a new and avowedly 'interdisciplinary' branch of social science had become very fashionable: enormous sums of money were poured into new research and teaching institutions, and between the universities and the development agencies 43

History a new profession of Development Specialist was created. His training was no longer essentially in economics, but in the broader 'interdisciplinary' realm of Development Studies. He took his place in the growing cosmopolitan cadre of consultants, planners and administrators, and carried the professional orthodoxies to the most distant parts of the Earth. Early academic involvement in the practice of development may be found in the work of Russian economists and American social scientists in the inter-war years. 'Research and Development' (R&D) has for long been close to the heart of industrial processes in the USA, and has proved itself adaptable first to the problems of rural development in America and then to similar problems in the Third World. A brief account of one very influential case, the Academy for Rural Development at Comilla in what is now Bangladesh, illustrates how this came about. In the densely populated, disaster-prone region of the Bay of Bengal, efforts at rehabilitation and development have persistently looked to the 'grass roots', to the reorganisation of families and villages. In association with the First (Pakistan) Five-Year Plan in 1954, the USA provided extensive aid to support 'Village Agricultural and Industrial Development Projects' (V-AID). In the same year, the American Ford Foundation funded a mission from Harvard University to advise on development, and it was decided to establish two R&D academies at Peshawar in West Pakistan and at Comilla in the East. Thus began the influential Harvard University Development Advisory Service, and a new approach to teaching, development and research in Pakistan. With its expertise in the rural development of the American mid-west, Michigan State University became the training ground for Peshawar and Comilla staff, from 1957 onwards. The Academies evoke the pattern of the American Land Grant Colleges, and it is clear that in its broader ambitions for integrated development within a region, the Comilla project was influenced by the Tennessee Valley Authority. However, there is no doubt that the success and celebrity of Comilla is due in large measure to the personality and innovative zeal of its Director from 1958 to 1968, Akhter Hameed Khan. Previously a schoolteacher and district officer, he is now justly revered in Bangladesh, and visitors to the Academy are shown the adjacent ashrams occupied by him and Mahatma Gandhi. Under his direction, teaching, research and development at Comilla became very closely integrated in what was seen as the fundamental task of linking the interests and capacities of government with the needs of the people. At the Academy, officials taught peasants and peasants taught officials: both met in the classrooms to discuss problems with visiting specialists. Training and Development Centres which replicate this pattern on a smaller scale have been established throughout Bangladesh. The Comilla project has been particularly concerned with the estab44

The rise of Development Studies lishment of high-yielding varieties of rice and tubewell irrigation, and with the organisation of cooperative societies. One of the earliest of these was for rickshaw men: Akhter Hameed Khan's persuasive powers turned an initial investment of pennies into collective ownership of a major brickworks, a fleet of rickshaws and the provision of valuable social services. Comilla has survived the rigours of cyclone, war and drought in the early 1970s and remains a highly influential model for rural development in the Third World. For this celebrity, it has suffered a plague of visitors. In October 1967, Comilla was visited by three teams from the World Bank, a group from the Iranian delegation on agriculture, a Japanese industrial survey team, an adviser from the Bank of England, a Danish poultry expert, Indonesian lay doctors, representatives of the Quakers' Community Development Service and the Church World Service, and various Pakistan government officials (Raper 1970: 326-7). The Comilla model has been carried by the Swedes to the Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit in Ethiopia (see p. 131), and in many other countries it has been a paradigm for 'Integrated Rural Development'. Apart from the R&D approach, this model has two particularly salient features: the notion of replicable 'packages' of development effort, and the association of each package with a specific political unit within which the project management plays a dominant role. In the 1960s, the enthusiasm for academics and academic credentials is very striking. Leaders of the new states acquired doctorates and used them conspicuously as terms of address, and in the proliferating government bureaucracies, what Dore (1976) has called 'The Diploma Disease' became endemic. Academics from the industrialised countries toured the world on consultancies and secondments, and inaugurated chairs in the universities which were themselves part of the credentials of independent statehood. All this was enthusiastically encouraged by President Kennedy, whose recruitment of social scientists became known as the 'Charles River Approach' from the way in which it threaded its way through Harvard, MIT and other seats of learning in Massachusetts. The practitioners of development undoubtedly felt resentment, especially when it appeared that they were the objects of critical enquiry; Packenham notes that the USAID Program Guide Manual was avidly bought and studied by academics, although it received a cool response from officials (1973: 248). From the point of view of anthropology, one of the most important university-based R&D projects was carried out in Peru: In 1952, in collaboration with the Indigenous Institute of Peru and with the support of the Peruvian government, Cornell University undertook a systematic program of research and development in order to determine how an Indian population would respond to a concerted effort to introduce it to a more modern way 45

History of life. The community selected was Vicos, a hacienda situated in an inter-Andean valley, Cellejon de Huaylas, about 250 miles northeast of Lima. Known for its conservatism and its hostility to the outside world until 1952, this hacienda had undergone little change since it was first established in the colonial period, over four hundred years ago. (Holmberg 1971: 530-1)

Initially concerned with devising replicable techniques for social change in peasant societies, the Vicos project acquired in the 1960s some ambitious political interests and methods. With the support of the Peruvian authorities it sought to become a 'benign landlord', progressively ceding control of the hacienda to the tenant farmers. The Cornell team were intent on influencing US foreign policy in Latin America, and to this end made effective use of the American ambassador in Lima and the participation of President Kennedy's younger brother Edward. One aim was to devise a 'policy science', of use to the newly formed US AID and Peace Corps; 'power relations' were to be used to 'induce modernization in small-scale communities', through the agency of a 'coalition of peasants, scientists and politicians' (Dobyns et al. 1964: 192). Such rhetoric has tended to obscure an important central premise of Vicos, that peasants may be educated to liberate themselves; this was insisted upon by the project Director, Allan Holmberg, a messianic figure reminiscent of Akhter Hameed Khan, and by a wide range of social reformers before and since. In its brief heyday in the 1960s, political science proliferated a jargon in which analysis and ideals were often confused: 'nation building', 'vertical integration', 'political penetration' and 'institutional transfer' are examples. For the enthusiastic liberal these were the 'social correlates of democracy' (Packenham 1973: 215), implying an authoritative role for state institutions. A favourite phrase was 'development strategy': progress was no longer simply a technical exercise, it was planned warfare. However, serious study of the relationships between 'centre' and 'periphery', between the state and the people, led to some important advances in the understanding of political process. Economic images of 'brokers' and 'middlemen' were evoked to describe the transactions which extended over the largely mysterious middle ground between government and the people. Political studies by anthropologists like F.G. Bailey also made it clear that if development was a 'strategy' of government 'penetration', the people had the will, the capacity and the good reason to fight back. In 1956 the American anthropologist Robert Redfield concluded his study of Peasant Society and Culture with a chapter on 'The Peasant View of the Good Life' (1960: 60-79) - the characteristic mixture of rural conservatism and envy of the metropolitan way of life. A decade later, Bailey offered an altogether more acerbic image of 'The Peasant View of the Bad Life', in an article calculated to shock the 46

The rise of Development Studies practitioners of development. Beyond their own 'moral community', the Indian peasants studied by Bailey could perceive a broader category of 'outsiders': revenue inspectors, policemen, development officers, health inspectors, veterinary officials and so on; men in bush shirts and trousers, men who are either arrogant and distant or who exhibit a earneraderie which, if the villager reciprocates, is immediately switched off; men who come on bicycles and in jeeps, but never on their feet. These are the people to be outwitted: these are the people whose apparent gifts are by definition the bait for some hidden trap. (F.G. Bailey 1971: 303)

If development officials were shocked by such portrayals of the gap between 'Us' and 'Them' with whom so many of them sincerely identified, an even greater shock was in store for the social scientists. Hitherto, the study of 'political culture' had been preoccupied with 'Them' - with the nature of traditional cultures and the impact upon them of 'modernity'. In an important book on political development in India, the Rudolphs insisted that modernity and tradition do not stand contraposed, but 'infiltrate and transform each other' (Rudolph & Rudolph 1967: 3): 'caste has absorbed and synthesized some of the new democratic values. Ironically, caste associations have become one of the factors that link the mass electorate to the new democratic political processes and make these processes comprehensible in familiar terms to a population still largely illiterate' (op. cit.: 64). While the distinctions between tradition and modernity were being dissolved, significantly different 'paths' to modernity were being discovered in the experience of the two Chinas and Japan. Communications were becoming too complex for notions of bounded societies and cultures to have much value, and ramifying patterns of conflict throughout the world made it increasingly difficult to construe change in terms of systems and equilibria. In short, academic involvement in the 'real' world of development was rapidly undermining the basic working premises of liberal social science. The discovery that development was ideology and politics was exciting; the subsequent discovery that social science was also an ideology and politics was traumatic. Few lessons have been more instructive than the involvement of social scientists in the infamous 'Project Camelot': In 1964 and 1965 the Office of Research and Development, US Department of the Army, began the famous Project Camelot. In the words of Senator Fulbright, this was conceived as a 'basic social science project on preconditions of internal conflict, and on effects of indigenous governmental actions - easing, exacerbating or resolving - on these preconditions'. The project was immense, funded to over six million dollars; it was to include social scientists from a variety of disciplines including sociology, political science, economics, psychology, and anthropology; and it was oriented towards the study of Latin America. The project was contracted to the Special Operations Research Office of the 47

History American University, which conducted research on behalf of the army. This connection was not concealed, and anyone knowing of the connection between specific research and SORO sponsorship should have known the ultimate sponsor . . . When the operation was 'blown' in Chile every possible Macchiavellian [sic] interpretation could be and was placed upon it. After a furor in Latin America and in United States academic and political circles the project was cancelled in 1965. (Belshaw 1976: 259-61)

The social scientists retreated with burnt fingers and struggled to devise codes of ethics by which they might continue to contribute usefully to development. In 1969, J.P. Nettl remarked that 'We may indeed be approaching the end of a phase of developmental analysis. The unities are breaking up, both in terms of cross-disciplinary priorities and indices as well as cross-national relevance. One may well question whether the notion of developed worlds is as meaningful as it appeared even five years ago . . . Development as a problem may be going out of fashion' (Nettl 1969:22). The notion that western social science and its imitations in the Third World were part of a morally defective ideology of modernisation was too radical for many scholars to contemplate. They might have been prepared to turn to other things and allow development studies to fall slowly into decline. However, the subject was invaded by a rapidly expanding cadre of marxist scholars, who subverted most of the established premises in the study of development. Liberal social science was subjected to a series of vigorous and damaging attacks from which it is still trying to recover.

1970-80: Underdevelopment and the crisis in planning

Western approaches to development planning were already in disarray before marxist critics denounced them as instruments of capitalist penetration. International contributors to an inquest on The Crisis in Planning (Faber & Seers 1972) lamented that, over twenty years, real achievements had lagged far behind expectations, and that some good intentions had actually proved damaging. Efforts to take control of economic growth had been frustrated by the political and social vagaries of a world in which ceteris were too seldom paribus. There was a grave 'data gap' - a lack of hard facts for realistic prognoses and plans. For some, planning itself appeared futile; in a hard-hitting attack, Caiden and Wildavsky remarked that 'An essential paradox of planning is that it is expected to create the conditions necessary for its own success . . . Planners are still trying to overcome the same disabilities that did not let them plan in the first place; that is, their countries are still poor' (1974: 266). An Indian economist asked the Faber and Seers symposium: 'Will 48

Underdevelopment and the crisis in planning the large masses of the poor have the patience to wait until we develop the necessary will to break out of these vicious circles?' (Minhas 1972: 54). In the past, too much blame had been attached to political, economic and cultural incapacities in the poor countries. For Caiden and Wildavsky, culture was a particularly spurious explanation: 'Cultures differ, but behaviour in regard to planning and budgeting is remarkably similar . . . What we do find in the literature, which further explains our reluctance to use the concept of culture, is its use as a residual category. When all other explanations fail, the analyst can always try to save the situation by saying that some amorphous glob called culture is responsible for the phenomena he cannot explain. Poor nations lack a common culture; they share poverty and uncertainty' (1974: xvi). It was becoming increasingly evident that poor countries were the victims of adverse terms of trade, capricious commodity markets and financial restrictions, most of which originated beyond their shores and were beyond their control. Such things made national planning at best an act of wish-fulfilment: 'Uncertainty and anxiety about the future in a new nation . . . are based on an accurate estimate of reality . . . Long term strategies require a measure of environmental stability that is absent in most new nations' (Scott 1968: 248). Moreover, too much of the development effort was devised, directed and executed by agencies outside the countries concenred: policies were tawdry imitations of western ideals, projects were planned and financed by other national and international bodies, constructed by American and European companies and monitored by globetrotting consultants. Even for a country like Tanzania it was extremely difficult to give some palpable form to its own ideas of progress. In spite of these discoveries, the underlying virtues of planning were not seriously challenged during the 1970s. It is striking that the marxist revival in social science brought attacks on almost every aspect of liberal notions of development, but had very little to say about the principles of planning. Instead, their critiques turned on the particular patterns of the expansion of capitalism from Europe and America into the world at large during the twentieth century: this impinges on planning in poor countries insofar as it represents the effort of the industrialised countries (specifically their ruling classes) to organise the affairs of 'peripheral' nations. This line of argument had been emerging during the 1950s and 1960s in a number of important critical studies, notably Paul Baran's Political Economy of Growth (1957) and Worsley's survey of the new 'Third World' (1964). In retrospect, it seems that the empirical study of development since the Second War has had a different continental emphasis with each decade: in the 1950s, South Asia; in the 1960s, Africa; and in the 1970s, Latin America. This is reflected in changing foci for 'Area Studies' in the 49

History western universities: an interest in Indian planning in the 1950s shifted to an enthusiasm for development in the new states of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s; this in turn seemed to arouse an interest in planned development in the poor, decaying 'banana republics' of Latin America, whose progress was observed closely by academics during the 1970s. In 1963, a survey of nineteen Latin American states indicated that the organisation of development was indeed lagging behind: six had perspective and medium-term plans, nine had less ambitious programmes, and four had none at all (Griffin & Enos 1970: 203). 'Where plans exist they are frequently prepared by foreign technicians working with a few local advisers. The plans are essentially technocratic exercises . . . The plans are not implemented; nor are they intended to be implemented. They are documents prepared largely by foreigners for foreigners' (ibid.). Although it had drafted a plan in 1940, Colombia's first effective 'General Plan for Economic and Social Development 1961-70' was prepared under the tutelage of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). It is perhaps surprising that the radical critiques of the 1970s originated in the efforts of this UN organisation, the ECLA, to stimulate planning in Latin America. Hirschman has described the mood of disillusionment and self-deprecation which prevailed in the decolonised, but not-soindependent countries of the continent in the early decades of this century. Intellectuals accounted for lack of progress and decay in terms of psychological and cultural inertia, but in the inter-war years a sense of grievance against US expansionism evoked some more evidently political complaints (Hirschman 1961: 3-42). In 1948 the ECLA was established as a regional commission of the UN in Santiago; it brought together twenty Latin American countries, and the USA, the UK, France and the Netherlands (countries with a colonial interest in the continent). The remarkable coherence and independence of mind achieved within the ECLA is largely attributable to the personality of Raul Prebisch, Director from 1950, and to the group of radically minded social scientists he gathered around him. Prebisch's Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems (1949) became a 'manifesto' for ECLA: it drew attention to the one-sided relationships between industrial capitalist centres and impoverished rural peripheries, particularly the terms of trade, protection policies and income elasticities of demand for imports which were so costly to the poorer Latin American countries. Prebisch believed that state intervention could help solve these inequities, and programmes to promote industrialisation were adopted with modest enthusiasm by countries like Colombia, Brazil and Peru. 'Import Substitution', the idea that poorer countries should plan to reduce their dependence on expensive foreign imports, was a central principle. Prebisch's 'militancy' on 50

Underdevelopment and the crisis in planning behalf of the 'peripheral' countries exerted some influence on organisations like the World Bank during the 1950s (Adler 1972: 33), but his views of dependency and under development acquired currency only through the vigorous writing of Andre Gunder Frank more than a decade later. For Frank, 'underdevelopment' had a decidedly transitive usage: some countries, or some classes, 'underdeveloped' others. 'Underdevelopment' was not, as liberal social scientists readily assumed, the natural state of poor countries, a predicament which the rich countries could help alleviate; it was the result of a historical pattern of capitalist expansion in which the economies of rural periphery were bound in a hierarchy of dependent, exploitative relationships to industrial capitalist centres. In Latin America, evidence pointed to an accumulating pattern of impoverishment rather than growth: While per capita food production rose 12 per cent in the whole world between 1934-8 and 1963-4, and 45 per cent in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (which are universally known for their agricultural failure), Latin America's per capita production of food fell 7 per cent and its distribution among the people is every day more unequal. The absolute standard of living of the majority of Latin Americans is going down . . . For them, evidently, the only way out of Latin American underdevelopment is armed revolution leading to socialist development. (Frank 1971: 346)

In the 1970s, Frank gained considerable celebrity for his swingeing attacks on 'bourgeois social science'. In an essay with one of the dialectically involuted titles which became a Frank trademark, 'Sociology of development and underdevelopment of sociology' (1969), he attacked the liberal theories of modernisation for their 'empirical inaccuracy', 'theoretical inadequacy', and 'policy ineffectiveness'. Again, the remedy for underdeveloped countries was doctrinally clear: modernisation theories are 'the emperor's clothes, which have served to hide his naked imperialism. Rather than fashioning the emperor a new suit, these people will have to dethrone him and clothe themselves' (op. cit.: 78). His message for anthropologists was much the same: become liberation anthropologists, expose the emperor's nakedness, and promote revolution (op. cit.: 137-45). The various marxisms which flourished in development studies during the 1970s showed a greater capacity to depose than propose. Once the critique from the left gained momentum, few initiatives in planned development outside the socialist states could escape the onslaught. If liberal theories of modernisation developed by an ungainly process of accretion, each new contribution adding to rather than seriously challenging the others, marxist theories of underdevelopment acquired no greater coherence from the dialectical enthusiasm for critique and restatement. 51

History For some, the active underdevelopment in which planners were deeply complicit involved the suppression of emergent capitalism on the 'periphery' of the world system (see Amin 1976; Howard 1978), while for others it involved the subjection of an assortment of 'precapitalist' productive systems to the historically ascendant mode. In such analyses planning for the Third World was largely an expression of bourgeois and capitalist self-interest, history rather than philanthropy at work. Tony Barnett's appraisal of what is undoubtedly one of the oldest and largest development projects of the twentieth century, the Gezira scheme in the Sudan, illustrates the substance and the vigour of the marxist critiques. The Gezira scheme was established eighty years ago to produce cotton on irrigated land just south of the confluence of the Blue and White Niles at Khartoum. By 1970, the scheme had developed into a huge publicly owned enterprise involving some 100,000 tenant families and two million acres of developed land. Since 1959 Gezira has been well known in development studies through a book by Arthur Gaitskell, Gezira: a story of development in the Sudan (1959). In this informative memoir Gaitskell, an erstwhile Manager of the scheme, presents a positive but not uncritical account of Gezira, tracing its origins in venture capital, the intervention of the colonial state, and the development of a paternalistic style of management. He argues the virtues of a three-way partnership between foreign capital investment, government control and popular participation. The core of the Gezira success', Gaitskell declares, 'lay in the form of planned agriculture and the policy of control and help associated with it' (op. cit.: 278). Gaitskell describes how the Gezira scheme originated in an experiment by an American concessionaire. In 1907 a commercial Syndicate took over, drawing on London-based shareholder finance. In 1919 the colonial government intervened in the capacity of landowner, and the tripartite 'partnership' was established. It was based on proportional shares of Gezira produce: 'It gave Government and peasant a mutual bond in adversity or in success, and it provided a practical method of doing the same between the Government and the Syndicate by passing on some of the Government's six-tenths share in return for technical management and for relief on some of the capital obligations' (op. cit.: 70). Gaitskell describes the subsequent consolidation of the government's 'trusteeship', culminating in the nationalisation of the scheme in 1950. Gaitskell was himself the Manager of the scheme in this transitional phase; though he dwells in his book on the impressive technical achievements, his concern for 'social development' is plain: 'Our basic assumption . . . was a future picture of a co-operative community of farmers capable of managing their local affairs through their village units, assisted meantime by our organization whose duty was to make this com52

Underdevelopment and the crisis in planning munity one of healthy, intelligent and progressive men and women' (op. cit.:216). Gaitskell did not see the Gezira scheme in vacuo, but in the context of broader twentieth-century developments. In a BBC interview in 1950 he remarked: I think there are three reasons really why the Gezira Scheme would be of interest to the outside world. They are these: in the first place as an example of a scheme that economically lies about half-way between America and Russia. Secondly, it's an illustration of the theme of President Truman's fourth point, long before the world at large became aware of the importance of the development of backward areas. Thirdly, it's an illustration of democratic regional development, rather on the principles of the Tennessee Valley Authority than on those of the Soviet Union. (Sudan Gezira Board Archive, Barakat, accession no 700-4) The Gezira archives indicate that Gaitskell dealt with a stream of international visitors and correspondents: for example, he was invited by one to compare Gezira with the soviet kolkhoz (collective farm) as an 'alternative to communism', and by another to comment on the suitability of the 'Gezira model' as a means of redeveloping rubber smallholdings in Malaya (Sudan Gezira Board Archive: 700-2). In planning, Gaitskell was much concerned with the need to strike a balance between efficiency and equity: 'In underdeveloped countries the need for an ordered plan to overcome poverty is extremely difficult to avoid. The problem is to get off the ground floor of mere subsistence, but also to see that the benefit does not remain merely in a few hands, leaving a rift between enterprising rich and feckless poor' (Gaitskell 1959: 333). Nevertheless Barnett, in his book The Gezira Scheme: an illusion of development (1977), sees Gaitskell as absorbed in the paternalist ideology of colonialism. If Gaitskell's book is essentially a manager's view, Barnett takes the part of the tenant farmer. Inspired by Gunder Frank, he makes a very negative evaluation of the dependent underdevelopment of the Gezira Scheme: 'In broader historical terms, and in terms of a wider understanding, the Scheme cannot really be considered as a successful example of development. On the contrary, it is stagnant, holds little hope of continually rising living standards for its inhabitants, and, as a major component of the Sudanese economy, it exposes that economy, and thus the society, to considerable potential and actual instability' (op. cit.: 15). The Gezira tenant, he maintains, is caught in a 'low level equilibrium trap' (op. cit.: 180), from which the escape can only be (echo of Gunder Frank) 'socialist armed revolution' (op. cit.: 24). For Barnett, the origins and raisons d'etre of the Gezira scheme were to be found in British imperialism. It was a response to pressures from the Lancashire cotton industry for a reliable source of raw material, and the 53

History need to consolidate the Sudan as an economically self-supporting colony, strategically placed on the route to India (Barnett 1975). The scheme thus became part of a structure of underdevelopment, a productive subsystem from which metropolitan capital made its appropriations. 'Four social categories' were locked into a kind of dynamic statis: the massive administration of some 10,000 officials, wealthier and poorer tenants, and hired labourers. Barnett writes in illuminating detail about productive relationships, concluding: The tenant is, then, an individual who is situated at the lowest level of a large producing concern . . . He is responsible for carrying out one particular function at particular times; his work is under the direction of an extended chain of command, and he receives cash payments for his efforts. There is a close parallel between his position and that of a factory operative'(1977: 96). In his analysis, the colonial state is not a trustee but an instrument of appropriation, a function consolidated by the post-colonial state. In the Sudan, any socialist revolutionary propensities were soon nipped in the bud by military government and an inheritance elite of 'young technocrats' (op. cit.: 140-1). Barnett usefully combines a macroscopic and a microscopic perspective, but he is less than generous about Gaitskell's breadth of vision. The latter showed an awareness of the ambivalence of foreign capital (Gaitskell 1959: 21), and an understanding of the ways in which an enterprise as large as Gezira could foster internal, as well as foreign, versions of 'colonialism' (op. cit.: 332). Interestingly, Barnett's ostensibly more objective book has been criticised for its own kinds of partisanship. Most notable is his failure to deal adequately with the huge category of mainly immigrant labourers on which the tenants and the whole Gezira edifice depend (Adams 1980; Bushra & Sidgi n.d.). The seasonal demands of cotton production have always made the Gezira scheme dependent on external supplies of labour: tenant farmers have demanded it, and management has always been obliged to abet the inflow. Remarkably, a large proportion of this workforce comes from distant Equatorial Africa and from northern Nigeria. Barnett remarks that 'The tenants are caught between the demands of the organization and the demands of their labourers' (1977: 180), but of the latter he has little to say - mainly because his studies did not extend to their segregated encampments. For a marxist, the omission is a grave one: Sudanese critics have pointed out that Barnett's fieldwork pre-dates his discovery of Gunder Frank and his consequent radicalisation, obliging him to 'fit whatever data he had already collected to the new intellectual framework' (Bushra & Sidgi n.d.: 3). This is true of a very large number of doctoral theses and research reports compiled during those hectic years. Finally, local reactions to Barnett's book invariably complain that it is 'unconstructive', offering no counsel other than the exhortation to revolution. By contrast, 54

Underdevelopment and the crisis in planning Gaitskell's book is still respected, not just for its historical narrative, but for the clarity of its reformist vision. Surveying the motley theoretical contributions from the left in 1979, Henry Bernstein was unimpressed. 'Underdevelopment', he insisted, 'does not constitute a coherent object of explanation' (1979: 93). Its analysis has produced too many unsatisfactory categories, and the old dualisms which dogged modernisation theories have re-emerged in the contrasts between metropole and satellite, domination and dependence, centre and periphery. The literature is cluttered with weak descriptive terms - lumpenbourgeoisie, semi-periphery, neo-imperialism, quasifeudalism, and so on; and an untidy proliferation of precapitalist and 'transitional' modes of production - peasant, petty commodity, colonial, lineage, and so on (op. cit.: 94). For Bernstein, and for others, all this is a betrayal of Marxian orthodoxy: The only theory able to inform the struggles of the proletariat and other exploited classes throughout the world is that of historical materialism, which is itself the site of a continuous struggle to maintain its integrity and hence its effectiveness. (Bernstein 1979: 97) This view has been stated most forcefully by Bill Warren in his Imperialism: pioneer of capitalism (1980). Warren argues that from Lenin onwards, marxists of varying hue have deprecated colonial expansion, and have thus subverted basic Marxian tenets. Imperialism has served to establish indigenously rooted forms of capitalism throughout the Third World, he argues, in a manner fully consistent with historical materialist understandings of 'development'. It seems that the radical left and the radical right may now concur that the practical task of development is the rapid expansion of industrial capitalism. Although each side presumably has in mind rather different historical outcomes, immediate interests and strategies are sufficiently similar to allow planners of very different ideological persuasions to work together quite companionably in the international development agencies. A shared professional interest in the immediate means easily displaces anxieties about divergent long-term ends. The marxist revival which has animated western social science has roused relatively little interest in the USSR. In the socialist states, western enthusiasm for planning at home and abroad may be dismissed as capitalist strategy or as 'unconscious socialist tendencies' (Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences 1978: 94). However, without genuine socialist revolution, planning efforts in the mixed economies are deemed fruitless. 'Planning is one of the advantages and basic features of socialist society' (Toschenko 1978: 17) and is seen, somewhat ambiguously, as both the expression of socialism at work and the means for constructing socialism. 55

History It is a system of management which is the enactment of 'objective social laws': 'Socialism represents . . . a system of social relationships which brings itself, in a conscious manner, to optimum conditions in accord with cognizance of the objectively existing laws of the development of society' (Changli 1978: 61). There is no debate about whether planning should be done, only about how. it is a matter not of choice but of historical necessity. In the socialist states, planning is seen as 'a powerful instrument of scientific prediction based on the cognizance of laws of social development' (Kutta 1978: 51). This preoccupation with technique has helped to develop a close correspondence between planning styles and procedures in East and West. The socialist states have shown an unflagging interest in technical advances in the capitalist world, spurred on by deep-seated anxieties that they should not be outpaced by innovation. This interest has extended to 'management science', and such subjects as cybernetics. There is no doubt that planning technocracy in the USSR absorbed a great deal from the western experiments with 'techniques for growth' in the post-war decades. Indeed, much soviet rhetoric today has a strikingly familiar functionalist ring, for example: 'The management of social progress is the systematic exertion of influence on the part of the subject of management (the directing sub-system) upon the social object (the directed sub-system) based on reliable scientific cognizance. Its objective is the effective functioning of development and the comprehensive improvement of society' (Changli 1978: 67-8). Today the liberal social scientist, wary of technocratism, would see in such pronouncements an evasion of the politics of planned development. The soviet planners reiterate the need for control (hence their interest in western techniques of data collection and processing, economic forecasting, etc.), but this is seen as predicated on the strength of the party rather than the state, and on a process of 'democratic centralism' which will serve to secure a 'united advance' (Kutta 1978: 49). However, it is acknowledged that 'central consciousness' is not fully developed in the socialist states, and that there remain 'numerous relations of inequality' which generate confusing, unregulated 'spontaneous' processes, 'which cross cut the path of central decisions intended to express all societal interests' (Ferge 1978: 78-9). Thus it can be seen that soviet planning presents a dilemma of democratic consensus - seeking to create the conditions for its own fulfilment - very similar to that which confronts the mixed economies. The preoccupation of socialist planners with the means rather than the teleology of development gives them many affinities with their counterparts in the mixed economies. The latter were slightly bruised but no better advised by the marxist critiques of the 1970s: the invitation to abet revolution was hardly compatible with the performance of official roles. 56

Under development and the crisis in planning Nevertheless, for almost every activity in the field of development the left had a challenging question: who benefits? Inevitably, solutions have been pursued in more, rather than less rigorous planning, and in efforts to draw the poor and dependent populations of the world into better coordinated participation in international affairs. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, a club of rich and poor nations (156 members in 1977) was convened in 1964 with Raul Prebisch as its first Secretary General, and has met at four-year intervals since. The collective bargaining position of the poor countries has been studied by a UN working group in 1972 and at a conference six years later, but Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries' (TCDC) has not, as yet, met with much success. Nor has the more sonorous attempt of the UN General Assembly to establish a 'Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order' in May 1974. The NIEO was to be based 'on equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and co-operation among all States, irrespective of their economic and social systems, which shall correct inequalities and redress existing injustices, make it possible to eliminate the widening gap between the developed and the developing countries and ensure steadily accelerating economic and social development and peace and justice for present and future generations' (UN 1979: 123). The rhetoric has been more impressive than the achievements: the continuing irresponsibility of the wealthy countries of the 'North' in a world whose very survival was threatened was indicted in the report of an independent commission of politicians and development specialists under the chairmanship of Willy Brandt, the former Social Democratic Chancellor of West Germany. An effective 'programme for survival' would depend on a new international altruism, freer and more equitable trade, and a greatly increased flow of funds from 'North' to 'South'. Organisations like the World Bank had become too bureaucratised, too centralised, and too remote from the mundane but very urgent problems of an impoverished world. The Report noted that the Bank had 'a Professional Staff of about 2400, of which over 95 per cent work at its headquarters in Washington' (Brandt 1980: 248). The implication was not that the World Bank should be in any sense smaller, but that it should be engaged more intimately in the problems of poor countries. The early 1970s were marked by a series of natural disasters which afflicted whole regions of the world, from the Sahel in Africa to the IndoGangetic plain, causing great misery to huge populations in numerous countries. This served to distract attention from some of the ideological perplexities of 'development', and to give planners a responsibility for alleviating misery as well as promoting growth. The century's exponential increase in population had evidently overstretched the finite resources of 57

History the planet: ecological movements appeared in the wealthy countries demanding a more conservative and more equitable management of the world's dwindling wealth. As if to underscore this point the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) declared that as a non-renewable source of energy their oil should be valued more highly. During the course of 1974, oil prices quadrupled, making it abundantly clear that the world now had one economy, not many, and that it was rapidly going into recession. If the industrial capitalist countries felt the pinch of the OPEC price hikes, the effect on many of the poorer countries was devastating: transport systems disintegrated, and the price of essential agricultural inputs like fertiliser became prohibitive. The costs of individual projects soared and whole national plans were derailed. Chastened somewhat by marxist critiques, liberal social scientists devoted themselves to the immediate problems of poverty, the reasons for its persistence, and the most effective remedies. Determined to discover 'Why Poor People Stay Poor', Michael Lipton, for example, pursued an explanation in the 'urban bias' of development policy, and a remedy in more determined popular movements, tougher but more abstemious politicians and planners, and in all matters including research, a greater rural emphasis. David Lehmann has aptly labelled this line of thought 'Neo-classical Populism' (1977), an adjustment of arguments of efficiency to problems of equity, and a recasting of social conflict in terms of a sectoral imbalance between town and country. Unfortunately, a programme for uniting Lipton's policies into a plausible unity seems remote (v. Kitching 1982: 84-92). The concern with poverty helped to provide the international and national development agencies with a new sense of direction, which in large measure avoided the embarrassment of 'politics' and of implicit or explicit ideological commitment. Watchwords for the 1970s became 'poverty-focussed aid', and the satisfaction of 'basic needs' (v. Streeten et al. 1981). In development planning the emphasis was conveniently on short-term, immediate and remedial measures, obviating the need for too much speculation about troublesome, long-term social goals. The consensus that (limited) growth ought to be equitable rekindled enthusiasm for the techniques by which this desired balance could be attained, notably in the World Bank during the Presidency of Robert McNamara (1968-81) (Adler 1972: 47). The pursuit of 'equitable growth' was construed in very technical terms - for example: 'In some cases one must reform the price system so that it gives better signals; in other cases one must reform the institutional setting in which prices are made; and in still other cases one must intervene directly with controls and state investment, overriding the signals of the price system' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 58

Underdevelopment and the crisis in planning 28). The best-known statement of this approach appeared in 1974 in a volume entitled Redistribution with growth, a collaborative effort by five development specialists from the World Bank and the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, led by Hollis Chenery (VicePresident for Development Policy at the World Bank). This sought a technical response to the 'challenge of poverty', to improve the distribution of the benefits of development without sacrificing overall growth. The report grew out of 'a dissatisfaction with the inadequate responses of policy makers to the growing problems of relative poverty and underemployment, and a desire to provide them with the analytical tools that are relevant to these problems' (Chenery et al. 1974: xiv). Since 'Distributional objectives should be treated as an integral part of development strategy' (op. cit.: 209) central planning should be strengthened and its functions integrated in order to 'maximise aggregated growth, reallocate investment, reallocate consumption, and transfer existing assets' (op. cit.: 56). 'To deal with the problems of poverty groups, we need to design overall programs or "policy packages" rather than a set of isolated projects. The choice among alternative programs for using public and private resources requires a statement of social objectives against which they can be evaluated, which is currently lacking in planning procedures' (op. cit.: xv). The technical challenge was seen in terms of identifying and serving the needs of 'target groups': 'A group of people who are not only all poor but also relatively homogeneous with respect to the effect that a given set of policy instruments might have upon them may be defined as a target group' (op. cit.: 91). Policies and plans would then be weighted in favour of the target groups; 'The methodology is politically neutral, since the weights can be chosen to fit the preferences of a given society. In these terms, the conflict between "equity" and "efficiency" disappears, since the most efficient program is the one which maximises the welfare measure selected' (op. cit.: xvi). To many observers, efforts to find mathematical solutions to social and political problems were a distressing return to the technocratism of the 1950s. As one of Chenery's collaborators pointed out, too often 'the political process will fail to generate a well-defined social welfare function. Where this is so, there will tend to be a good deal of latitude for policy analysts and administrators involved in the planning process to impress their own particular views on the shape and direction of policy' (Bell 1974: 69). The cry of the planners was 'tell us what kind of society you want, and we shall explain the strategic choices which you have'; unfortunately, the governments of the poor countries were unable to declare with sufficient clarity and unanimity the kinds of society they wanted, or were unable to choose with sufficient speed and determination 59

History among the technical solutions offered. The task of policy making thus devolved upon the civil servants - for critics on the left, the insidiously expanding 'public service bourgeoisie'. More conspicuously, the organisation of development was in the hands of a relentlessly expanding international bureaucracy. Studious efforts to avoid overt political colour have made the international agencies look insipid from almost any point of view: policy is expressed in tortuous circumlocutions, gravitating towards the lowest common denominators of competing interests. Nevertheless, political orthodoxies have become established, implicitly rather than explicitly (v. Adler 1972), often disguised as 'implementation procedures' or 'neutral policy tools'. Organisations like the World Bank grope for terms less treacherous than 'policy' to describe their recommendations: 'We emphasize . . . that the "preferred strategy" is not intended to be a package of specific policy proposals, nor are the projections in the model supposed to be forecasts. However, we do suggest that the various components of the "preferred strategy" might indicate the general directions in which the economy could move over the next decade, to ensure that the goals which Kenya has set itself can be achieved' (IBRD 1975: xii). There is a pretence that policy still emanates authoritatively from individual governments: in reality, and in the face of the increasing internationalisation of development initiatives, very few poor countries have what Packenham (1973) has called the 'will and capacity' to organise development for themselves. Internationalism, it seems, is now a creed of both Right and Left. Aspirations for an integrated global development plan are presumably implicit in socialist doctrine. It is therefore rather surprising to find that one of the earliest pleas for 'complete international planning' was made by Lionel Robbins (1937) as part of an explicitly anti-communist, Liberal Manifesto. National planning, he insisted, was insufficient, even dangerous and politically divisive; it was above all economically restrictive. Global planning would create order and equilibrium, allowing 'maximum scope for the division of labour' (op. cit.: 247), and the greatest opportunity for the satisfaction of individual wants. Although it would be difficult to argue that the spirit of the Socialist International and of International Liberalism have converged, the de facto tendency for development planning to become more inclusive, 'more global' is very striking. In the mid-1960s, UN organisations like the Economic Commissions for Latin America and for Africa were trying to persuade member states to coordinate their national plans. Since 1949, 'pooling and coordinating the efforts of member countries' has been insisted upon in Article 1 of the charter of CMEA (v. Kaser 1965). In 1969 the FAO prepared an 'Indicative World Plan for Agriculture' (IWPA). The Brandt 60

Conclusion Report called for global efforts of this kind, and the era of hyper-planning may be less distant than we might currently suppose. Conclusion: the development of planning

The history of planned development is about the national pursuit of economic growth by economic expansion. Elaboration of the ideas, techniques and organisations of national planning seems to have matched the relentlessly increasing scale and complexity of industrial society itself. However, if 'most modern societies appear to have generated a "need" for planning' (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 9), it may be as much for remedial as for progressive reasons. An enterprise which began earlier this century in a mood of determined optimism has latterly become a more sober affair, beset by many doubts and anxieties. While 'progress' seems less assured, the threat of stagnation and global chaos indicates that we cannot afford not to plan. The dramatic growth of the population of the planet has made evident the need to husband its dwindling resources more efficiently, and the widening gap between wealth and poverty asserts the need to do so more equitably. Particularly in countries where prospects for development are limited by lack of resources, information and organisation, failure to plan is a dereliction of governmental responsibility: 'some planning is better than none' (Nath 1971: 309), even if its purpose is the restrictive one of preventing 'profitable but uneconomic investments' (IBRD 1975: 395 note 2). The historical outline has drawn attention to some of the generalised features of planning which have emerged during the course of this century, and which will be discussed in greater detail in the following chapters. These owe much to the fact that today the basic medium for planning development is the nation state, and that in the international arena there are fundamental similarities in the history, structure and functions of all states. The state has become the instrument by which very different regimes, pursuing a variety of ideologies, seek to take control of national resources and to put them to the most profitable use in a future which will always remain uncertain. This desire for control is expressed in one of the universal tenets of planning, its integration. Today, it is the systematic view of economic and social change which distinguishes national planning from the piecemeal, project-by-project approaches which have preceded it. Individual development schemes are no longer devised and executed in isolation, they are measured-off against each other within the rubric of a 'comprehensive' plan. Investment in one major sector of the economy is likewise measured-off against investment in other sectors. Planning is thus inherently aggregative, 'concerned with big choices, with choosing 61

History between alternative patterns of life, with what the French call les grandes options' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 26). This may be rationalised in terms of the pursuit of greater efficiency and equity, and economies of scale in the disposition of national resources. However, the development of macroplanning has often been at the expense of more detailed microplanning, and many specialists are now greatly exercised by problems of 'vertical linkage', the need for greater coherence between the 'economy-wide level' and planning in localities or specific projects (Duloy 1974: 195208). Thus Streeten and Lipton have complained that while India has one of the most complex and sophisticated Central Planning Commissions, 'small-scale planning, at the level of the village and project, barely exists' (1968: 8). More generally, macroplanning, dealing at a high level of abstraction with aggregate indices like per capita GNP, trade statistics, fiscal changes etc., has tended to lose sight of the fact that development is ultimately about the welfare of ordinary people (op. cit. :9). The scale and uniformity of planning is intimately related to the expansion of state bureaucracies during the course of this century. Its association with the exercise of state power has given the organisation of planning strong centripetal tendencies: in terms of the allocation of responsibilities, the deployment and promotion of qualified staff, and even the siting and equipping of offices, planning is strongest at the centre and usually very much weaker in substantive ministries, regions and districts (IBRD 1975: 391-2). The gap between centre and periphery is only one of many contradictions which afflict planning everywhere. At the heart of the matter is the persistent discrepancy between intention and achievement, the repeated failure of costly efforts to bear fruit. There is also the dilemma of pursuing economic growth and maintaining political stability, of securing individual liberty and maintaining state control. In policy there is the persistent tension between efficiency and equity, between gradual and more urgent approaches. These dialectics are not peculiar to a particular state or regime, they are, it seems, characteristic of national planning everywhere, whether it is advised by socialist or by liberal ideals. The planning efforts of modern states differ more in ideology than in substance, and - central to our argument - differ little in terms of organisation and procedure. Perhaps the most conspicuous difference could be summarised as one of degree, the political and economic emphasis placed upon planning in particular states, and the rigour with which it is carried out. Ideological differences do not in themselves account for the degree of planning: pleas for rigorous, even coercive measures are as likely to emanate from humanitarian liberals like Gunnar Myrdal (1968: 895ff.) as from GOSPLAN apparatchiks in the USSR. In substance, the plans of 62

Conclusion states with very different ideological attitudes share basic common features: the mustering of resources for investment in industrial growth, the shift away from agriculture with concomitant problems of balance between town and country, the desire to increase per capita income and reduce differences in wealth, the need to make their populations more productive while at the same time improving social welfare and opportunities for leisure. These ideals are as important in the USSR as in countries like Mexico or Malaysia (v. Toschenko 1978: 22). Differences of degree in planning are usually seen in terms of a polar distinction between the laissez faire economy, 'in which allocations are determined by the market, and the "command" economy, in which they are set by central fiat' (Bell 1974: 56). The former may be epitomised by the entrepot economy of Hong Kong, the latter by the state socialism of the USSR. Underlying this distinction are the political capacities of different states, weak in the case of Hong Kong, rigorous in the case of the USSR. From a liberal perspective, Huntington observes the latter with something approaching admiration: The one thing communist governments can do is govern; they do provide effective authority. Their ideology furnishes a basis of legitimacy, and their party organization provides the institutional mechanism for mobilizing support and executing policy' (1968: 8). By contrast, the 'mixed' economies which still preponderate in the Third World lack this centralised political capacity, and liberal democracies like the UK have other deficiencies in consensus and control (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 187; and Appendix C). However, it is an historical oddity that the USA - by any account a strong state with centralised political capacity, and the wealth to invest in planning - is one of the very small number of countries which have never had a national plan. It is even more curious that the USA, a country whose liberal ideology has consistently set it against state intervention in the economy, has provided for so many years the ideas, techniques and personnel for planning in other countries. There has certainly been a planning debate in the USA: during the 1950s and 1960s, for example, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations called for it, but its socialist connotations have always made it unpopular (Waterston 1965: 41). Nevertheless, the American government has invested heavily in its own underdeveloped regions, a piecemeal intervention which, as we have seen, has provided paradigms for regional planning. Critics would of course see American enthusiasm for comprehensive planning in other poorer and dependent countries as evidence of the need for metropolitan capital to organise and control the economic periphery. If the Left has never been able to give much force to this argument, it must be because planning is so evidently a basic force in the construction of state socialism. 63

History For their part, Americans seem to have little difficulty in reconciling their distaste for planning at home with their appreciation of an orderly and productive developing world (Hanson 1968: 8). Among those states which do plan, the most conventional distinction is between the indicative style, and the imperative or command style. Again very largely a matter of degree, the former is characteristic of the 'mixed' economies and depends upon 'a combination of the direct allocation of central expenditure and the modification of market tendencies to meet the requirements of the specified objective function' (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 156). Indicative planning involves drawing up forecasts, setting targets, and hoping that fiscal and other measures may persuade private enterprise to toe the line. The contrast with the imperative style of Russian planning is evident in Stalin's blunt declaration: 'Our plans are not forecasts but instructions' (Ellman 1979: 17). Ideally, 'the central authority has total direct command over all controllable economic parameters' (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 158). The problem for both styles of planning is that the desired degree of control is not always achieved. Although the soviet state has a tight grip on the economy, it would be wrong to assume that control is 'total', and that plans have preordained success. The debate between 'genetic' and 'teleological' approaches to planning, outlined at the beginning of this chapter, remains in many ways unresolved in the USSR. A preoccupation with the social organisation of production has had awkward consequences for patterns of distribution and consumption, particularly in determining the supply and pricing of commodities, as well as setting wages and providing labour incentives. An old-fashioned concern for efficiency has produced some contrary notions like the 'profit-maximising socialist enterprises' (Nove 1969: 82) and increasingly the USSR has had recourse to monetary policies more usually associated with the management of the capitalist economies (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 57). Again, attempts to develop inter-state planning among the CMEA countries have been justified in the very liberal rhetoric of competitive advantage in markets, etc. (Plaksin n.d.: 32). 'Imperatives' in soviet planning have not always produced results: 'Experience has shown that the process of plan implementation is not the harmonious socially rational process for the attainment of predetermined goals. It actually contains substantial elements of waste and inefficiency' (Ellman 1979: 79). It has proved extremely difficult to strike a balance between over-zealous and unrealistic determination of targets by the centre, and the 'slack plans' which tend to result from allowing productive enterprises a greater say: different solutions to this problem have been pursued in the USSR and Yugoslavia, and it has been close to the heart of political crises in China, Czechoslovakia and, more recently, Poland. During the course of this century the differences between indicative 64

Conclusion and imperative styles of planning have slowly been eroded: 'While planning in the socialized countries tends to become less detailed and less centralized, development planning in the mixed economies tends to become more detailed, more comprehensive and more centralized' (Waterston 1965: 46). Liberal economists have developed their own rationales for national development planning, arguing, for example, that 'the unrestricted operations of the market might give rise to a suboptimal set of values for the parameters of the economic system' (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 25). More exactly, planning is 'not an alternative to the market as much as the means to reproduce results that could be expected of the market' (van Arkadie 1979: 560); 'it must make judgments about demand under conditions of changing prices and incomes, something which can be largely ignored in socialized countries which treat consumer demand as a residuum' (Waterston 1965: 80). A device which liberal economists often use to justify the principle of planning, and the unreliability of the 'hidden hand' of the market, is the 'Prisoners' Dilemma': it is argued that if two accused parties bargain separately with their judge they will both end up worse off than if their interests were mediated by a third party concerned to maximise their welfare (v. Ellman 1979: 5-7). If Russia is a paradigm of imperative planning, France is a paradigm for the indicative style. Both states have planned determinedly and consistently, the former since 1928, the latter since its first four-year plan in 1947. The most obvious difference is the scale of planning operations in the two countries: the USSR has a planning staff of thousands, while in France 'the total permanent full time staff is small, consisting of no more than 35 professionals, and 140 in all' (Kindleberger 1967: 282). Poland, with a substantially smaller population, had at the same time a planning staff of 788 (Tinbergen 1964: 34). Soviet planning organisation extends from the productive enterprises, Associations and territorial units, to the Central Planning Commission (GOSPLAN) in each Republic and the Union as a whole. France's Planning Commissariat is kept purposely compact but has, nevertheless, a wide range of functions and great political importance. There is plainly a desire to make it appear relatively unobtrusive: nevertheless its influence and success (serving as a model within the EEC and for many developing countries) is a matter of national pride; rhetorically, French planning was seen by De Gaulle as a rejection of 'the inhuman fatalism of "laisser faire, laisser passer" ', and by Giscard as the means of 'regulating the exercise of economic freedom' (Kindleberger 1967: 290). A comparison of these two countries, France and the USSR, illustrates the degree to which planning processes have converged during the course of this century. Today, 'The technical apparatus of the Soviet planning machinery bears a remarkable resemblance to its French counterpart. . . 65

History and both nations have clearly learned from one another' (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 179). Both countries have responded to the problems of planning by developing organisations, controls and techniques and, notwithstanding the difference of scale, have come up with strikingly similar solutions. Soviet 'planometrics' are matched by the econometrics of planning in the mixed economies (Waterston 1965: 61), and both countries show an acute interest in data collection and processing, and in economic modelling. The 'control ciphers' and 'social indicators' dating back to the First Five-Year Plan in Russia, have been developed into standard planning devices (Toschenko 1978), while soviet planners have shown a keen interest in the complex French macro-economic models like 'FIFF and 'SESAME' (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 168). These moves are all evidence of what Waterston called 'a planned approach to planning organization' (1965: 379ff.). The metropolitan countries now devote increasing amounts of time and energy to 'planning planning' (Streeten 1971) or 'metaplanning' (Meier 1965: 71). The proprieties of planning have become almost obsessive - for example: Judicious planning of these industrial areas at the start, to prevent overcrowding and junk accumulation, enables the adjoining residential areas to survive and provide an increasingly skilled labour supply . . . Simultaneously, several neat, orderly industrial estates should be laid out in the more spacious suburban areas . . . (Meier 1965: 220)

The emergence of a planning profession, of theories, techniques, schools and courses, have all contributed to the routinisation of planning. It is rapidly becoming a self-justify ing, self-generating affair with its own internationally accepted rules and organisations. Countries with several decades of planning experience have fallen victim to many of its orthodoxies: this is as true of the USSR (Nove 1969:78) as of India where, as Hanson remarks, a bright young man with an original turn of mind would have to be extremely intrepid to challenge the 'sacred cows' which graze in the Planning Commission (1966: 262-3). A major problem for Third World states is that they are consumers of planning styles and techniques which were 'largely devised in and for the more advanced countries' (Waterston 1972: 86), and are thus inappropriate to their needs and capacities. In the mixed economies of the Third World, 'The concepts employed-e.g. capital, consumption, savings, output, labour - are essentially Keynesian categories originally used in constructing macroeconomic models of the trade cycle in industrial economies. These are frequently irrelevant when considering problems of development in non-industrial societies' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 236). The poorer countries have become a messy melting pot for planning policies and processes, vacillating between indicative and imperative styles, as in India (Hanson 1968: 55), and being unable to take any firm 66

Conclusion grip on their own intentions: 'Planning in the less-developed world typically involves a rhetorical commitment to socialist objectives, a technical commitment to "neutral" policy tools, and a practical achievement of capitalist results' (van Arkadie 1972: 111). There is growing awareness of, and hostility to, the derivative nature of planning in the Third World, but the search for more authentic styles has so far met with little success. A mood of pessimism hangs over national planning in many countries of the world; some critics (e.g. Bauer 1976) see it as an impossible, even dangerous task, while others question whether, narrowly defined, it has ever actually happened (van Arkadie 1979: 567). The most general problem, however, is that the hopes and expectations of planning have vastly exceeded practicable results. Even the most sophisticated techniques have often failed to make an inherently uncertain future more tractable. It is particularly dispiriting when national plans meticulously embody the conditions for their own failure: Waterston points out that Ethiopia's second five-year Plan (1963-7) proposed the creation of a large number of special institutions - a new investment bank, an agricultural development agency, a foreign trade corporation, a land reform agency - all of which were prior requirements for fulfilment of the plan itself (1965: 345). Again, Jamaica's Plan for 1957-67 was prepared 'on the basis of two essentially conflicting objectives: the achievement of rapid growth through industrialization and the creation of the greatest number of jobs' (op. cit.: 150). The perfunctory facade of many 'national plans' became distressingly evident when the 'crisis in planning' was discussed in the late 1960s (v. Leys 1972: 59). As Hanson has remarked, mainly apropos the conscientious efforts made in India, it would be impossible to establish a direct connection between the thoroughness of planning and measurable economic growth (1966: 1-2). The Hand which distributes economic blessings, whatever it may be, evidently has few rewards for diligence alone. Many countries which used to plan do not do so now. However, this does not represent a strategic decision, rather a political and economic incapacity. Countries like Uganda are simply so poor, and their state structures so enfeebled, that authoritative attempts to organise their own futures are impracticable. If they had the capacity to plan there is very little doubt that they would do so; the twentieth century has produced no more effective ways for poor countries to pursue economic growth, and for nation states to make themselves economically and politically viable. Planned development can still be rationalised and justified in many ways: inaction in the face of poverty, disease and disorder is morally indefensible; planning is the scientific instrument of post-revolutionary socialism; it is the rational way of moderating human greed and inequity. Even in the face of failure and disillusionment, it is buoyed up by 67

History optimism, by a belief that planning itself can be improved. The most hardened sceptic in the planning profession can usually dredge up one or two instances of success. Planning, like magic in the primitive world, is sustained by what Malinowski has called 'the testimony of the positive case': 'One gain usually outweighs several losses. Thus the instances which affirm magic always loom far more conspicuously than those which deny it' (1954: 82). With such 'successes' as the transformation of Russia and China, with concrete achievements like the TV A and Comilla, a thousand planning disasters may pale into insignificance.

68

Appendix A: Aid and development planning

Without material resources to invest, planned development is impracticable. Unable, for varying reasons, to realise their own resources fast enough, most Third World states have had recourse to capital assistance from other countries. We have already noted the importance of this for the 'internationalisation' of development planning; to account more fully for the importance, scale and political significance of aid we shall focus here on the largest aid donor, the USA, and perhaps the most needy and dependent recipient, Bangladesh. For poor countries, the choice is evidently a tough one: extensive use of aid, with its promise of more rapid growth but its attendant anxieties about dependence on the rich countries; or limited use of aid, with doctrines of self-reliance and a slow rate of growth which could well prove costly in economic and political terms (v. Streeten & Lipton 1968: 3-15). Some countries have had few scruples and have accepted assistance from whoever was prepared to give it. Others have had little choice: Bangladesh, emerging from war and natural disaster in the early 1970s, welcomed any help it was offered. Between December 1971 and January 1973, nearly US$1,318 millions had been committed, more than two thirds of it bilaterally (Oliver 1978: 183). In 1976, a range of UN agencies had offices in Dacca with a combined senior staff strength of thirty-one, eleven of them with the World Bank. A wide variety of projects were being supervised and funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), the Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A great deal of assistance was provided by Private Voluntary Organisations (PVOs) which, in the two and a half years up to March 1973, had contributed US$116 millions to Bangladesh (op. cit.: 183). One of these PVOs is VOLAG, whose valuable role is to impose a little order on the enormous number of PVOs working in the field of agricultural and rural development in Bangladesh, mainly by the 69

Appendix A publication of a Directory. The 1976 VOLAG Directory lists 131 PVOs, 95 of them international organisations ranging from OXFAM to 'Uncle Eric's Children's Help' (Sweden). VOLAG acknowledges that its list is far from complete, but includes some of the more durable domestic PVOs such as the Bangladesh Volunteer Service and a general welfare association called 'Clothe the Nudes'. These depend very largely on funding from international PVOs like OXFAM, which operates nearly all of its development projects in this way, or donations from national development agencies in the wealthy countries. A separate list of official governmental aid agencies operating in Bangladesh would also be extensive. As the world's poorest country in terms of pcGNP ($90 in 1980, according to the World Bank) with the possible exception of Kampuchea, Bangladesh stands in stark contrast with the rich countries - the USSR ($3,700), the UK ($5,030), the USA ($9,590) and Kuwait ($14,890 - top of the list). In relative terms, Bangladesh has been treated generously: in 1973-4 total aid commitments exceeded $1,000 millions (Faaland & Parkinson 1976: 184). In such a country it is difficult to distinguish 'disaster relief from 'development aid'; in planning, the problems of taking account of the enormous volume of assistance received from so many diverse sources are almost insuperable, and it is perhaps understandable that aid should be treated in very vague terms in Bangladesh's First Five-Year Plan (1973-8). In 1980 the USA was the largest individual contributor of bilateral aid, providing $80 millions in grants and loans plus $95 millions' worth of food aid to Bangladesh, delivered mainly in the form of 'Food for Work' schemes. Nearly all of this assistance is managed by the US Agency for International Development through twenty-two projects (in 1980), the most costly of which sought to improve the distribution of fertilisers (USAID 1981: 272-6). Although America remains the world's largest aid donor, US economic assistance has never exceeded the annual amounts appropriated by Congress for the Marshall Plan ($6,446 millions in 1948-9, for example). As Figure A.I indicates, aid appropriations have changed remarkably little over three decades; for the fiscal year 1980 the bill was $3,779 millions, a sum whose real value would amount to a rather small fraction of what was virtually the same amount appropriated thirty years before. In a publicity brochure, USAID noted ruefully that in 1979 the average American paid roughly $1,575 in tax and that only $5 of this went to support AID programmes throughout the world. About $3.75 of this was spent on goods and services in the USA. 'Thirty years ago, the United States was the only country offering economic aid as a national policy. Today, twelve other industrialised nations as well as OPEC countries contribute a larger percentage of their resources to aid than does the 70

Aid and development planning Fig. A . I . Economic assistance appropriated by US congress, 1948-79 (From USAIDn.d.: Table l , p 34)

u

6

ARS [

S

"i

3

=

2

\

CO

3

V

\

1

CD

1950

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

United States' (USAID n.d., AID's Challenge). If the average Bangladeshi had to contribute international aid at the same rate as the average American he would have paid a little less than nine US cents in 1980. In proportion to national wealth, British aid has also been meagre - around 0.3 and 0.4% of GNP during the 1970s; although spending reached £632 millions in 1978, this amounted to only £227 millions at 1970 prices. The apparent parsimony of American aid is mitigated somewhat by the increasing cost of its commitments in other spheres: including military and other spending, the gross aid bill for 1980 was US$7,757 millions (USAID 1981: 451). The USA spends large sums of money on multilateral aid, mostly through the UN agencies: for example, it contributed US$140 millions in 1979 to the UNDP, and routinely covers about a quarter of the running costs of the UN and its agencies. The 'genealogy' of American economic aid organisations since the Marshall Plan is indicated in Figure A.2. In July 1955, after the emphasis had shifted from Marshall aid to international development aid, existing agencies were rationalised within a new International Cooperation Administration. A notable development in the preceding year was Public Law 480, the Agricultural Trade and Assistance Act, which made large quantities of American surplus produce available as 'Food for Peace' for poorer countries. 'PL 480' is now a by-word for US food aid, a policy whose virtues and vices remain the subject of much debate: for example, does its availability deter some countries from developing their own subsistence production? Set up in 1961 under Kennedy's Foreign Assistance Act, USAID has 71

Appendix A Fig. A.2. 'Genealogy' of the American Foreign Aid Organisations

ECONOMIC COOPERATION T T ADMINISTRATION

1948 1949

Marshall Plan

TECHNICAL COOPERATION ADMINISTRATION

Truman

MUTUAL SECURITY AGENCY

1951 1953

FOREIGN OPERATIONS ADMINISTRATION

1955

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ADMINISTRATION DEVELOPMENT LOAN FUND /

1957

1961

AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (AID)

Eisenhower

Kennedy

Johnson

Nixon 1973

DEVELOPMENT COORDINATION COMMITTEE Ford

r

1979

_ INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AGENCY

Carter

r Reagan

72

Aid and development planning had a long and influential career. It now administers each year between a third and a half of America's total economic assistance budget ($1,700 millions out of $3,779 millions in 1980). About a third of its funds are allocated as low-interest loans and most of the rest consists of grants, as well as funding for research and contributions to Private Voluntary Organisations. US AID also administers the PL480 food programme, and 'Security Supporting Assistance' supplied by the Economic Support Fund; the purposes of the latter are strategic, and in 1980-1 about 86% of its resources were devoted to the American peace initiative in the Middle East. Since 1961, the scale of the US AID organisation has increased steadily: in 1979 its staff of 9,548 (58% of them US citizens) delivered economic assistance to seventy-six countries (USAID n.d.). Like most other public and private donor agencies, US AID is primarily interested in specific development projects: these serve to focus more clearly the political and economic interests of thedonor as well as the recipient country. To varying degrees, a project can be isolated from the wider political and economic context - in other words, from the mass of 'constraints' which are reckoned to afflict orderly development in poor countries; the donor can bargain for more managerial control, and a better opportunity to demonstrate to observers at home and abroad the value of the exercise. US AID has devised elaborate procedures for the preparation of 'Project Identification Documents' (PIDs) and subsequent 'Project Papers' (PPs) which serve as guidelines for decision making, evaluation and monitoring. However, the scale of its own operations has increasingly obliged US AID to concern itself more with macroplanning, to take a systematic account of 'US foreign policy goals; needs, aspirations, priorities and pressures of the developing countries; and coordination of policies with other donors and institutions' (USAID n.d.: 19). US AID plans its own operations in terms of 'Sectoral Guidelines', published in its Handbooks, and since 1979 it has produced for each country receiving a minimum of $35 millions over a five-year period a 'Country Development Strategy Statement'; this is a 'five-year rolling strategy document, updated annually', a sort of private version of the National Development Plan which serves as a basis for the design and evaluation of USAID projects and programmes - in the context of those of other donors and of the recipient country itself. A 1973 amendment to the US Foreign Assistance Act outlined 'New Directions' for USAID, in which more help was to be directed to the poorest people in the poorest countries (USAID 1981: 488). In 1978, President Carter's revision of the Foreign Assistance Act called for 'Programs in support of countries which pursue development strategies designed to meet basic human needs and achieve self-sustained growth with equity' (USAID n.d.: 4). In October 1978 the President established 73

Appendix A a new International Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA), 'To provide the United States with governmental machinery far better able to fulfil our commitments to assist people in developing countries to eliminate hunger, poverty, illness, and ignorance' (op. cit.: 38). The purpose of this agency was to integrate the proliferating development efforts of a wide range of US government departments (Commerce, Labour, Agriculture, the National Security Council, etc.); it also became the parent body of US AID. By the mid-1960s, the need to plan and co-ordinate the activities of the proliferating UN agencies themselves led to the establishment of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 1965. By the end of 1977, UNDP had on its books 8,450 projects in 150 countries, with a joint cost to the UN and recipient governments of $6,200 millions; a few of these projects were implemented by UNDP itself, the rest by the various UN agencies. By 1971, UNDP was obliged by the sheer scale of its responsibilities to move away from a system by which each project was proposed and carried out individually, towards one which 'harmonizes with national development plans and objectives'. In this 'Country Programming Method' (very similar to that evolved by USAID) 'UNDP gives an advance estimate of each country's share of UNDP resources over a five-year programming cycle in the form of indicative planning figures (IPFs) and makes every effort to help Governments co-ordinate all assistance from the United Nations system at the country level' (UN 1979: 138). The increasing strength of development organisations in the wealthy countries and in the UN seems to be leaving progressively less scope for the poor, dependent countries to devise effective solutions to their own problems: 'Opportunities for change are sought through reformmongering among the bureaucracies of aid agencies and national governments which might be receptive to progressive policies and by putting their case on public offer to be taken up by sympathetic groups' (van Arkadie 1979: 570). Van Arkadie notes a growing ideological boldness in the international agencies - social democratic or populist in attitude. Policies are justified by scientific values, but much of the research on which these are based 'arises out of advisory work to governments and international agencies, which predetermines the character of the analysis' (ibid.).

74

Appendix B: Planning in Britain

In 1931, George Bernard Shaw returned from a visit to Moscow full of enthusiasm for the achievements of the Bolsheviks. Then aged 75, he addressed his audience in the Trade Union Hall as 'Comrades' and declared that England, like Russia, should have a five-year plan. Although only a small minority in Britain may have favoured the Soviet model, it is striking that both the Conservative and Labour parties have, at varying times and in varying degrees, insisted on the need for central planning. Debates have not turned on whether Britain should plan or not, but on whether it should do so indicatively or more directively, through the public ownership of industry (the Labour view). The ambivalence of official attitudes to planning was evident in the apology which the new Central Planning Staff offered for the Long Term Programme (1948-52) which it had drawn up for Marshall Aid: Economic planning in the United Kingdom is based on three fundamental facts: the economic fact that the United Kingdom economy must be heavily dependent upon international trade; the political fact that it is, and intends to remain, a democratic nation, with a high degree of individual liberty; and the administrative fact that no economic planning body can be aware (or indeed ever could be aware) of more than the very general trends of future economic developments. (Budd 1978: 67)

Planning in the immediate post-war years consisted mainly of setting production targets for major industries, and then shifted in the 1950s to more 'Keynesian' efforts to manage the level of demand. By 1960 dissatisfaction with these policies and with the meagre growth of the British economy prompted the Conservative government under Harold Macmillan to take a closer interest in the supply side of the economy. A National Economic Development Council and Office (together acquiring the sobriquet 'Neddy') were set up in 1962 with the intention of establishing an indicative style of planning along French lines. Trades Unions and employers' organisations were brought together to agree broad outlines, and major firms were asked for detailed plans which would ensure a 75

Appendix B national annual growth rate of 4%. In 1964, the new Labour government reorganised the planning endeavour under a new Department of Economic Affairs; on the strength of elaborate input-output analyses of British industry the first National Plan (1965-70) was duly launched. By 1966, the Labour government acknowledged that the Plan had collapsed. In the ensuing inquest it was generally agreed that its targets had been too optimistic and that there had been inadequate measures to ensure that the proposed rates of growth were actually achieved (Opie 1972: 211). Without more effective political and economic machinery to give some substance to policy, 'planning' in Britain returned to more feeble attempts to control prices and incomes, and then to even less successful efforts to control the money supply in the essentially laissezfaire approach of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government (1979-). The debates about the virtues and vices of planning continue while the British economy steadily deteriorates. While national planning agencies have had an intermittent and chequered history, much of the initiative for development projects has devolved to local government and has depended very heavily on professional and technical staff. Although the British constitution has origins which are lost in the mists of time, 'grass roots' organisations like parish councils are barely a century old, and today public interest in and knowledge of local government affairs is notoriously vague. Ordinary people tend to view officialdom as an undifferentiated Them', and public involvement in local planning consists very largely of retaliatory action when 'Their' schemes impinge directly on the lives of individuals and groups. Following the efforts to devise a National Plan in the 1960s a new Town and Country Planning Act (1968) was drawn up which, among other things, set out 'to ensure that there are greater opportunities for the discussion of important changes while they are still at the formative stage and can be influenced by the people whose lives they will affect' (DOE 1969: 7). The procedures devised to ensure that 'public participation is real and effective' (ibid.) depend on 'two ups and two downs' in which the local authority's proposals are publicised for public comment, a detailed plan is drawn up, public objections called for and if necessary an enquiry held. The local authority must then approve the revised plan, but the Minister of Housing and Local Government (now the Department of the Environment) 'has the power to intervene . . . and to take the decision into his own hands' (ibid.). It is notable that this kind of 'public participation' is designed to solicit and, in various ways, eliminate objections to proposals made by professional planners. One reason for this is that we do not live in a society in which more constructive participation is feasible: 'the public' cannot select the site for a new airport for London, or reroute a motorway, or even design a pedestrian crossing; but individ76

Planning in Britain uals and groups can protest very loudly if aeroplanes threaten to disturb the peaceful skies above them, or if a new highway is likely to trim the bottoms off their gardens. During the 1970s the power of ad hoc pressure groups, dependent on coverage by national news media, became a characteristic feature of local policies; conscientious planners could feel bewildered by their persistent exposure to public acrimony, and wonder why so little of the debate was conducted through orthodox local government bodies. Democracy was apparently running riot, and maverick groups were demolishing schemes on which the welfare of the public at large evidently depended. It is therefore hardly surprising that the most notable experiment to stimulate public involvement in local development in the UK has had few practical consequences. Between 1969 and 1972 the Community Programmes Department of the Home Office launched the British National Community Development Project- 'a neighbourhood experiment aimed at finding new ways of meeting the needs of people living in areas of high social deprivation'. A principal intention was to 'build a communication bridge between the people and local services': to diagnose the problems of twelve localities in Britain selected for their 'multideprivation' or chronic poverty, and to find ways of enabling the people to articulate their own needs, to undertake concerted 'community action' on their own account, and to form pressure groups for dealings with local and national authorities. These were radical intentions, inspired by efforts to mobilise the poor in urban America and elsewhere, but they could find some justification even among conservatives in that they were clearly concerned with the 'apathy' of people living in depressed areas, not simply encouraging people to pester local authorities. Each project area had a population of between ten and twenty thousand, and three 'action' staff provided by the local authority, and three 'research' staff provided by a nearby university or polytechnic. Inevitably the staff were young and inclined towards the political left, and it is surely commendable that in their interim and final reports they were not concerned to confirm the prejudices of central and local government officials. What was 'wrong' with their project areas, and why efforts to build bridges to government were so often frustrated, could not be explained satisfactorily by notions like 'decay' or 'public apathy'. Diagnoses were borrowed from the expanding literature on underdevelopment in the Third World, and attention was drawn to the predations of big capitalist enterprises and the tacit collusion of local authorities. Needless to say, this was not the kind of message the Home Office wished or expected to hear. The final reports were politely received, and that was that (Topping & Smith 1977; CDP Interproject Editorial Team 1977). 77

Appendix C: Some significant dates in the history of National Development Planning 1601 1780-1820 1787 1812 1848 1906 1914-18 1917 1919

1919

1919 1920 1921 1921-8 1923 1926 1928 1929-53 1929-32 1929 1930 78

First Poor Law in England: beginnings of social welfare policy. Industrial Revolution in the UK. US Constitution drafted. First US Federal 'Aid Appropriation': $50,000 grant for earthquake relief in Venezuela. Publication of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto. King Leopold IFs plan for communications and mining in the Belgian Congo. First World War. October Revolution in Russia: Bolshevik victory. Covenant of the League of Nations - 'to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security'; inspired by Woodrow Wilson, but not joined by USA (first meeting in 1920). International Labour Organisation set up as an autonomous institution associated with the League of Nations. Governor Guggisberg's integrated 10-year (1920-30) development plan for the Gold Coast (Ghana). December: GOELRO plan (concentrating on electrification) in Russia. February: GOSPLAN, central planning organisation, set up in Russia. New Economic Policy in Russia. Imperial Economic Conference in UK. Empire Marketing Board set up in UK. First Soviet Five-Year Plan. Stalin's dictatorship in the USSR. Collectivisation of agriculture in the USSR. (First) Colonial Development Act in the UK. Publication of Treatise on Money by John Maynard

Chronology of national development planning 1932-3 1933

1933 1934-5 1938 1938 1939-45 1940-50 1940 1942 1944 1944 1945 1945-63 1945 1945

1945 1945 1946 1946

79

Keynes (1883-1946); The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). The Great Depression. President Roosevelt's New Deal policies in the USA; National Planning Board set up (later National Resources Planning Board), mainly to coordinate New Deal projects; NRPB abolished 1943. May: Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) set up in USA). French Imperial Economic Conference. Indian National Congress party sets up a National Planning Committee. Moyne Commission appointed to enquire into effects of remedies for post-depression riots in West Indies. Second World War. Rise of development planning in the colonial countries. Colonial Development and Welfare Act in UK. Beveridge Report on Social Insurance and Allied Services, laying down principles for the Welfare State in UK. June: Planning and Development Department established by Legislative Council in India. July: United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference draws up Articles of Agreement for the establishment of the World Bank, at Bretton Woods. June: Charter of the United Nations signed. 'Cold War'; 'ended' after Cuban missile crisis in Oct. 1962 and signing of Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in Aug. 1963 by USA, USSR, UK and 62 other states. (Revised) Colonial Development and Welfare Act in UK. Indian Planning and Development Department's 'Second Report on Reconstruction and Planning', proposing 15-year perspective plans and 5-year mediumterm plans. Oct.: Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of UN setup. Dec.: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, the World Bank) established. Nigeria's first 10-year plan. Planning Commissariat (also responsible for Overseas Territories) set up in France.

Appendix C 1946 1946 1947-50 1947-50 1947-9 1947 1947

1947 1947

1947 1947 1948-52 1948 1948 1948 1948 1948

80

Oct.: First General Assembly of the UN. Nov.: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) set up. First (4-year) Plan in France. National Plan for Argentina prepared by Peron regime. First national 3-year plans in Hungary and Poland (2-year plans in Bulgaria - 1947, Czechoslovakia - 1948, German Democratic Republic-1949). Feb.-June: 'Fifteen Weeks' in which the 'Truman Doctrine' on aid and the Marshall Plan for Europe were formed in the US. March: Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) set up by UN (in Aug. 1974 became Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)). March: UK government sets up a Central Planning Staff to draw up a 'Long Term Programme' (1948-52), an indicative plan for the Marshall Aid Programme. (First) Town and Country Planning Act in UK: local authorities obliged to prepare development plans; revised acts 1962 and 1968 - latter requiring fuller public participation. Aug.: Independence and dominion status for India and Pakistan. Oct.: Communist Information Bureau (COMINFORM) set up in Belgrade to consolidate and pursue political interests of the communist states. The Marshall Aid Plan (European Recovery Plan); inaugurated in USA 5 June 1947, first shipments to Europe 5 April 1948. Jan.: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), code of conduct for international trade, comes into effect. US China Aid Act. Feb.: Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) set up by UN. April: Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) set up to administer the Marshall Plan (became OECD in Dec. 1960). April: Economic Cooperation Administration set up in USA to administer Marshall Plan (became Mutual Security Agency, Nov. 1951).

Chronology of national development planning 1948 1948 1948 1949

1949 1949 1949 1950 1950 1951 1951 1952-73 1953 1954 1954 1955 1955 1955

1955

81

April: World Health Organisation (WHO) set up by UN. June: Yugoslavia expelled from COMINFORM; pursues independent line in economic policy and planning. Nov.: First Plan for the Modernisation and Equipment of the French Overseas Territories. Jan.: Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA, or COMECON) set up by USSR, Bulgaria, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania; GDR joined 1950, later Cuba, Mongolia and Vietnam. In 'Point Four' of his inaugural address, President Truman promises to extend US scientific and technical expertise to the 'underdeveloped areas'. Sept.: victory of communists in China: People's Republic set up. US Korean Aid Act. Feb.: 30-year Sino-Soviet Alliance Treaty (collapsed after 1969 border clashes). March: Indian Planning Commission set up. July: First Indian 5-year plan (1951-6); Community Development Projects set up. July: Colombo Plan ratified: UK aid for Asian and S-E Asian nations; six-year planning period (1951-7) comes into force for participating countries. - approximately: period of boom in the capitalist countries; increasing interest in aid and trade. First Chinese 5-year plan (1953-7). April: USSR joins ILO and UNESCO. 'Public Law 480', the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act as amended, governing administration of the US Food for Peace programme (PL480). May: meeting of 29 Afro-Asian nations at Bandung; foundation of the 'non-aligned' movement, establishment of the Third World as a political force. July: International Cooperation Administration (ICA) set up in USA. Aug.: 72-nation conference at Geneva on the peaceful uses of atomic energy; after hydrogen bombs in USA (1952) and USSR (1953), international pressure for thaw in Cold War; increasing anti-nuclear movements (UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Jan. 1958). D e c : Japanese cabinet approve an Economic SelfSupport 5-year Plan.

Appendix C 1956-60 1957-68 1958 1958-60 1958 1958 1958

1958 1960-80 1960 1960

1961-75 1961-70 1961 1961 1961 1961 1961

1961

82

First set of co-ordinated five-year plans of the COMECON states (coordination exercise started in 1954). Spate of newly independent territories; planning, aid and trade embraced with enthusiasm. Second Chinese 5-year plan (1958-62). 'Great Leap Forward' in China. Jan.: European Economic Community (EEC) formally established. April: Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) set up by UN. Aid India Consortium set up by World Bank, coordinating aid efforts of USA, UK, Canada, Japan, W. Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, World Bank and (since 1960) International Development Association (IDA). Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) set up in UK: semiautonomous technical assistance programme. Twenty-Year Perspective Plan period, USSR. Sept.: International Development Association (IDA) set up by UN, affiliated to World Bank, to promote softer loans ('credits') to the poorest UN members. Dec: Convention ratifying creation of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) out of oldOEEC; expanded to include Japan. A 'First World' economic club, including 'Third World' aid programmes. USA at war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. First UN Development Decade. Colombian General Plan for Economic and Social Development (1961-70) prepared with ECLA assistance; pace-setter for planning in Latin America. US Peace Corps - overseas technical assistance agency set up by President Kennedy. Department of Technical Cooperation set up in UK. Aug.: India's Third 5-year plan (1961-5). Aug.: Formation of the 20-nation Alliance for Progress by the Declaration of Punta del Este (Uruguay); interAmerican ('Western Hemisphere') grouping, concerned with promotion and coordination of development planning. Nov.: US Agency for International Development (USAID) set up, as consequence of US Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

Chronology of national development planning 1962 1962 1963 1963

1964 1964 1964

1964 1965 1965

1965

1965 1966 1966-8 1966

1966 1967 83

Establishment of National Economic Development Office and Council in UK. First national development plan in Nigeria (1962-8). United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) established. May: Organisation of African Unity (OAU) set up, to defend sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of African states, and to eradicate colonialism in the continent. First Tanzanian 5-year plan (1964-9). Jan.: 'Eight Principles' of Chinese aid enunciated by Chou En-lai during visit to Africa. March: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) at Geneva; group of 77 (now well over 100) developing countries formed to promote their own economic interests. Oct.: Overseas Development Ministry (ODM) established in UK (under successive Conservative governments: Overseas Development Administration - ODA). National Plan for the British Economy, 1965-70. Plan collapsed in 1966. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) set up, by merger of the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (1949) and the Special Fund (for large projects-set up in 1958). Premier Kosygin announces modification of planning in USSR: managers of enterprises to be allowed more 'entrepreneurial freedom' within prescribed limits: emphasis on sales volume/profits. United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) set up in New York; mainly concerned with diplomacy/international cooperation. Fifth Economic and Social Development Plan (196670) in France. Cultural Revolution in China. UN Development Planning Committee appointed to evaluate planning in developing countries, and to make proposals for the 2nd Development Decade; 18 experts from 9 developed and 9 less-developed countries. Amendment to the (1961) Foreign Assistance Act in the USA; 'Title IX' - advocating 'utilisation of democratic institutions in development'. Feb.: Arusha Declaration by the ruling TANU party in

Appendix C 1968 1970 1971-80 1971 1971 1972 1973 1973 1973 1974 1976-90 1976 1976 1977 1977 1978 1979 1979 1979 1980

84

Tanzania; policy of 'socialism and self reliance', accent on rural development - 'ujamaa vijijinV. May: UNCTADII-NewDelhi. July: China, Zambia and Tanzania sign agreement for construction of TANZAM railway ('Great Uhuru Railway'); completed July 1976. Second UN Development Decade. Oct.: Resolution 2758 of UN General Assembly admits the People's Republic of China to UN and expels 'representatives of Chiang Kai-shek'. Ninth Soviet 5-year plan (1971-5). May: UNCTAD III at Santiago. Amendment to the (1961) Foreign Assistance Act in the USA; 'New Directions' - more help for the poor in US AID programmes. Development Coordination Committee set up in USA, to superintend development interests of USA government departments. Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announces first of a series of price rises. May: Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order, 6th Special Session of the UN General Assembly. Period of CMEA coordinated long-term plan. May: UNCTAD IV at Nairobi. Sept.: Death of Mao Tse-tung; beginning of Chinese liberalisation policies. Nov.: US Foreign Aid Act signed by President Carter; no aid for countries which violate human rights. Amendment to the (1961) Foreign Assistance Act in the USA; 'New Directions and Basic Human Needs'. Sept.: World Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC). Product of a working group set up by UN in 1972. Jan.: USA re-establishes formal diplomatic relations with China. May: UNCTAD V at Manila. July: US International Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA) set up. The Brandt Report - Independent Commission on International Development Issues (ICIDI) proposing a programme for 'Survival', based on close cooperation between 'North and South'.

2 Structures and processes

In this chapter we describe and analyse the major twentieth-century institution of national development planning. Portraying its distinctive structures and processes, we explain how these have become routinised as part of the apparatus of the modern state, and how this has in turn made popular participation one of the central issues in planned development. Using specific examples, we describe how plans are made. Analysing them as symbolic systems we show how they seek to organise time, resources, people and ideas for 'progressive' purposes; and how efforts to turn ideas into reality are so often fraught with failure. This anthropological view helps us to pose with greater clarity the key question: why do we have these planning institutions rather than some other? And how might we conceive of better ways of organising development?

Introduction The poor countries can adopt one of the most modern techniques of all, national planning - the formulation and interrelation of society's goals and the systematic determination of the various ways and extent to which these goals can be attained. For ideological, intellectual and computational reasons, planning is a technique that the industrialized nations lacked during their initial stages of rapid growth. The poor countries of today need not be so handicapped. For them, national independence, institutional reform and economic planning form a powerful combination which can help to overcome the inheritance of poverty and accelerate the pace of progress. (Griffin & Enos 1970: 19) For the growth of the planning profession nothing has succeeded like failure. (van Arkadie 1979: 572)

In Chapter 1 we traced the emergence of national planning as a worldwide institution, the means by which almost every country has at one time or another pursued more rapid economic growth. Notwithstanding the many uses to which it has been put it has, increasingly, been done very 85

Structures and processes much the same way everywhere. Having considered its origins, we now turn to the morphology of this institution: we shall examine its characteristic structures and processes, following much the same approach as an anthropologist might take to kinship, religious or jural institutions in 'primitive' society. Planning is very conspicuously a process - 'something you first make then try to carry out' (Leys 1969: 260). We shall therefore begin by assembling a composite empirical account of procedure - how planning is done in different countries, what it is supposed to achieve and the limits on what is actually can achieve. In exploring and explaining this complex process, we shall distinguish three main themes. The first of these is quite straightforwardly temporal: planning is an attempt to reach forward and gain some kind of control over a future which must always remain inherently uncertain. According to Waterston, 'all planning has certain common attributes. These include looking ahead, making choices, and, where possible, arranging that future actions for attaining objectives follow fixed paths or, where this is impossible, setting limits to the consequences which may arise from such action' (1965: 9). Thus, secondly, planning is concerned with the translation of ideas and ideals into reality. As such it is both a normative and a technical process, a search for the means by which desired future goals may actively be pursued. Thirdly, it is also a political process, a pattern of relationships between (most significantly) states and subject populations. It involves an exercise of power, and it ultimately depends on the compliance of ordinary people. It proceeds through a series of political levels from national centre to locality, seeking a conjunction of public and individual interest and activity. As we shall see, these processes, once they have become established, are not so much lineal as cyclical, a restless to-ing and fro-ing between centre and periphery, idea and activity, past performance and future goals. Planning brings together and formalises resources, interests and activities, and directs them to ends which differ from current practice, and which are unlikely to emerge in the 'natural' course of events. It is an act of mediation - which is why planners, in countries which take development at all seriously, are invariably in the middle, in the thick of things. Their role demands that they act purposively, authoritatively and optimistically, but the tasks which confront them are formidable. To do the job which is expected of them, planners need above all three things which, particularly in the poor countries of the Third World, are in notoriously short supply: material resources, information, and control. To generate growth planners must invest, and because poor countries are poor, they are often frustrated. To come to grips with the future, planners need detailed, accurate and up to date information to make diagnoses and prognoses; no amount of data will make planning perfect, but 'planning 86

Introduction without facts' (v. Stolper 1966) is the debilitating lot of most poor countries. And to make development projects work, planners must be able to count on efficient administration and a degree of public compliance which new states conspicuously lack. As planning has become routinised throughout the world, a particular division of labour has become associated with its component structures and processes. At the heart of the matter, in the planning agencies, are the economists, those technicians whose vexed task is to reduce the ideals and qualities of development to more manipulable qualities - to rates of growth, tons, hectares, months, and numbers of people. The implementation of development schemes is the responsibility of a range of practical people, administrators, civil engineers, and so on. Policy is the business of the Party, regime or government. Change, the purpose of all these efforts, is the responsibility of the people. The gap between publicly asserted goals and what people can in the long run be persuaded to do can be very wide indeed. For planners, the task of mediation can be very frustrating; although they take refuge in the essentially technical nature of their work, most of them would agree with Arthur Lewis that 'the quality of a plan depends on the quality of its policies rather than on the quantity and quality of its arithmetic' (1966: 23-4). They would also quite readily see themselves as involved in a decision-making process in which their role is ideally that of clarifying, teasing out and assessing practicable alternatives among which the authorised political leadership may choose. In practice, regimes can neither generate plausible policies nor choose between technical alternatives; increasingly, political and technical roles merge, uncomfortably and ambiguously, in the planning agencies themselves. Politically, temporally and geographically, the planning process can be very extensive, but, at some point, it must be reduced to a succinct statement - the Plan itself. As a distillation of the professed ideals and proposed actions of the state, and representing the investment of effort and scarce resources, it is an object of some veneration. The similarities, in content as well as structure, between one national plan and another bear further testimony to the increasing uniformity of this modern institution. Taking an anthropological perspective we shall regard the plan as a symbolic system, a set of categories which seek to manipulate people and resources in space and time. In analysing these categories we note their fragility, the very demanding technical uses to which they are put, and the confidence with which they are often deployed. Plans are social constructions, and their principal categories (goals, projects, sectors, etc.) only have the reality we care to insist they have. In the long run, development occurs because we say it has, rather than because in some absolute sense it has occurred. One of the most disorienting aspects of the critique of 87

Structures and processes planning during the 1970s was the subversion of familiar criteria of progress: a modest increase in per capita GNP, the completion of a bridge or dam, the successful adoption of new varieties of rice, none of these things could be admitted as unequivocal evidence of 'development'. However, our purpose is not to portray the structures and processes of planning as some kind of intellectual fraud, rather to point to the danger that the technical categories of planning may be accepted as absolute rather than relative values. Arthur Lewis offers a more down to earth account of planning than the quotation with which we opened this chapter: 'A Plan is essentially a set of guesses about the future, since the assignment of priorities requires uncertain estimates of likely results, benefits and costs. There is no formula for predicting the future; the best we can do is seek parallels in the past' (1966: 25). In planning, manipulative categories of some kind must be deployed, but it is important to enquire: why these categories rather than some other? As we shall see in Chapter 4, all kinds of planning deal with an intractable future, unpredictable people and unreliable resources. A sense of authority, confidence and optimism is vital in any planning process, but if this extends to delusions about the infallibility of techniques, or the 'neutrality of policy tools', success is in jeopardy. If we recognise that our control in planning can never be absolute, the way is clear to assess the relative merits of this approach or that. If the categories of planning are not questioned sufficiently today it is largely because they have become professional orthodoxies, part of the institutionalisation of national development planning.

The state and the planners

There is a logical connection between macroplanning and the administrative structures of the state: it has become one of the conventional means by which the officials of central government manage the affairs of the subject population confined within the geo-political boundaries for which they are responsible. Politicians may come and go, but civil servants are usually more durable, and the apparatus of the state more permanent than either. The state has the capacity to raise taxes, allocate and reorganise economic resources, deal with other states and international bodies, and deploy the physical force at its disposal in dealings with foreigners and with its own subject population. State officials may exercise the power at their disposal for the benefit of a very small number of people (possibly themselves) or may make conscientious efforts to improve the welfare of all citizens equally. As we have seen, planning is a means to organise economic growth and distribute its benefits, but in

The state and the planners itself it offers no guarantees that either task will be done equitably or efficiently. For critics of planning, its relationship to state power is something much more sinister than a need for coherent economic management and the achievement of useful economies of scale: Comprehensive planning does not augment resources. It only concentrates power. And by concentrating power such a policy augments and creates power because in a decentralised system of decision-making there do not normally exist such positions of power as are created by comprehensive planning. Centralisation and thereby creation of power is, then, a necessary result of comprehensive planning. Yet it is rarely discussed by its advocates. (Bauer 1976: 72).

The association of planning, in those states which practise it, with supreme political power seems inescapable: 'In only a handful of countries has the chief executive found it possible to delegate real responsibility for planning to a subordinate' (Waterston 1965: 489). The need for a potent planning agency is stressed by virtually every proponent of national planning: The planning commission needs a base of power that cannot easily be challenged, and so it must provide a useful service for the executive in disposing of day-to-day issues that have long-run consequences'; ideally, 'it is able to exert its power upon the various departments of government, and the respective provinces or states contained within the nation, through its power of veto over the capital budget and its proposing of priorities for development' (Meier 1965: 114, 118). According to Griffin and Enos, 'The Planning Agency should not be a ministry equal to all other ministries, because the chief planner would not then be able to impose decisions upon his colleagues . . . The Plan must reign supreme in economic matters, checked only by the Ministry of Finance and, ultimately, the political will as expressed by the head of government' (1970: 187). Arthur Lewis has insisted that a planning agency should be specially created and 'be responsible directly to the Prime Minister or head of government' (1966: 246); it should have an independent staff and should be superordinate to the Finance Ministry. The head of the planning agency is concerned with 'making policies and establishing new objectives' and as such 'his outlook is expansionary, while that of the Financial official is restrictive'. 'The worst solution is to appoint a Minister of Development, and attach the Agency to him'; this would weaken planning by exposing it to inter-ministerial competition (ibid.). The close proximity of the planning agency to the head of government is often expressed in its physical location in the 'Prime Minister's Office', or in 'State House'; it is also expressed in the number of security checks a visitor is subjected to before he gains access to the inner sanctum. Thus 89

Structures and processes placed, central planners can secure, rather than simply solicit, the co-operation of other government departments (Waterston 1965: 465). At the apex of government, planners can evade many of the political problems to which they would otherwise be exposed; techniques and politics may be fused, and planning technicians acquire a degree of power greatly in excess of that enjoyed by colleagues of similar grade in other departments. Over-centralisation is, of course, a disadvantage and, as we shall see, the devolution of planning responsibility has become a necessity in states as diverse as the USSR, Kenya and Indonesia. Planning agencies vary considerably in the powers at their disposal; among the mixed economies, the South Korean Planning Board exercised a remarkably wide range of functions, covering both the formulation and implementation of plans, annual budgeting, managing foreign aid and investment, organising research, arbitrating in inter-ministerial disputes, and so on (Waterston 1965: 437). However, the basic responsibilities and patterns of organisation in central planning agencies in different countries are remarkably similar (v. Tinbergen 1964: 108-9). The Agency is divided up into a series of subunits, each led by a senior official; commonly these units are responsible for a separate phase of the planning process: research and statistics, forecasting, plan compilation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, public relations, liaison with aid agencies and with other government departments. A large agency may have separate sub-units to deal with major 'sectors' like industry, agriculture, or commerce, and with regional or other disaggregated aspects of planning, but more usually both of these dimensions are retained within the unit which actually compiles the plan, that nodal group which is 'the heart of the organization' (Waterston 1965: 525). In a big agency, competition among sub-units can become as tiresome as that among ministries - a further incentive to keep organisation compact. In a country like India, procedures are greatly complicated by numerous consultative committees which bring members of parliament, local and foreign consultants, members of trades unions, industry, and public interest groups into direct contact with the permanent staff of the agency. Planning begins to look like government in microcosm. By contrast, the French Commissariat General du Plan has, since its inception, deliberately maintained a small staff and compact, flexible organisation; it has between forty and fifty professionals and drafts in specialised advice and assistance when it needs it (Waterston 1965: 445). Created in 1946, the Commissariat is directly responsible to the Prime Minister, but is administratively independent. The Commissaire has ministerial status, and key roles in other organisations like the Social and Economic Development Fund; he is responsible for devising, coordinating and 90

The state and the planners superintending the execution of the French plans (Meynaud 1964: 10-11). A visitor from a university or government department in one of the western industrial countries (or from any country, for that matter) may feel very much at home in the central planning agency of almost any country. Planning officials are a very homogeneous group. In demeanour they are characteristically courteous, articulate, and with the discreet self-confidence which goes with their elite status. They communicate in an international language (English, Spanish, French) even when addressing a colleague who shares a more familiar dialect. In dress, living accommodation and even in diet they identify themselves as members of an international professional class. Where local dress or language is insisted upon in the planning office, it is usually for self-consciously nationalistic reasons, and invariably has a distinctive tailored appearance. Key professional staff have qualifications from universities in the major industrial countries, and travelling abroad frequently for courses, conferences and consultancy reinforces feelings of international fraternity; at the same time this distances them from rural dwellers in their own countries. Planning officials in districts, regions or substantive ministries undoubtedly covet the status and privileges of their senior, central agency colleagues: 'Central planning agencies have generally found that if they are not to attract only "the rich, the crooked or the incompetent," they must be exempted from the unduly restrictive civil service regulations which prevail in many countries and pay salaries above those paid to regular government employees' (Waterston 1965: 518). Thus the World Bank mission to Kenya found that the head of the Planning Division was a Deputy Permanent Secretary with a Permanent Secretary's salary - 'in view of the size and complexity of his task' (IBRD 1975: 391). The planning organisations of the major socialist states are distinguished mainly by their scale, with professional staffs running into thousands rather than tens or hundreds (Tinbergen 1964: 103ff.). Inevitably the five-hundred-strong planning bureaucracy of a country like Bulgaria is much more self-contained, and its professionals much less involved in international freemasonry than, for example, the nineteen planners in Norway (ibid.). Outside the soviet bloc, the international cadre of planners is still not large, indeed some would say that their influence is out of all proportion to their numbers. Around the mid-1960s a small country like Barbados had a professional staff of three, and a large country like India only 180 (Lewis 1966: 246); at the same time Iran and Sri Lanka had about fifty planners, and Turkey seventy (Griffin & Enos 1970: 191-2). The basic similarities in planning organisation and procedure clearly owe much to the freemasonry which exists among the 91

Structures and processes small, widely dispersed clusters of professionals. Indeed, the smaller and more isolated the planning agency, the more it may depend on the international fraternity (ibid.). Contacts are also maintained by peripatetic consultants from the aid agencies and international institutions, and by an increasing enthusiasm for exchange visits between developing countries. While the planning agency in a country like Barbados may be compact and informal, organisation and procedure in India - doyen of the Third World states as far as planning is concerned - is characteristically elaborate. Hanson describes arrangements in a Division of the central Planning Commission as follows: The top man of a 'general' or 'Subject' Division (whose rank depends on his seniority and the scope of his responsibilities) usually has technical qualifications, often in economics or statistics. He is assisted by variously-designated officers, hierarchically arranged. The bulk of the detailed work of the division is performed by senior research officers and research officers (gazetted), by economic investigators, Grades I and II, and by assistants (non-gazetted). There is a rather inadequate staff of stenotypists and stenographers, a perhaps more than adequate one of upper and lower division clerks, and the usual crowd of (to use British terminology) 'minor and manipulative' personnel, including as many semi-occupied or entirely redundant 'peons' as one finds in any other Indian government establishment. (Hanson 1966: 55)

Like many central planning agencies, the Indian Planning Commission has expanded and consolidated itself almost in defiance of constitution and official precedents; this growth has seemed insidious to its critics, who 'allege that the Commission occupies an anomalous position in the governmental structure; that although outside the constitution, owing its origin to a mere Cabinet resolution establishing it as an advisory body, it has nevertheless become an executive body of enormous power, an alter ego of the Cabinet, showing a persistent and increasing concern with administrative matters outside its province, and supporting its pretensions by equipping itself with an excessively large bureaucratic apparatus' (Hanson 1968: 45-6). Although India could not have acquired such an organisation if it had not, in some profound sense, needed it, its growth has certainly been engineered by what Rene Maheu, as Director General of UNESCO, called a 'sort of class of magicians' (Meynaud 1964: 146) people of ambition, determination and charisma. Hanson calls them 'econometric wizards' and 'unshakeable mandarins' (1968: 25, 26), and writes of the 'brilliant and virtually independent leadership' of Pitambar Pant which gave the Perspective Planning Division of the Commission in the 1960s a central role, and gave its dicta the force of 'holy writ' (op. cit.: 48,26). For Hanson, part of the problem in India has been that the techniques of planning have got mixed up, at too early a stage, with the politics of planning: 'The power of the politicians on the Commission tends to 92

The state and the planners inhibit the expert officials from producing genuinely independent advice and developing an esprit de corps' (1966: 529). The Planning Agency' declares Lewis, thinking of an ideal type, 'is engaged in diplomatic negotiation, rather than in decision-making. Its integrity is involved; it is the guardian of the Plan's rationality: its internal consistency, its efficiency, and its relevance' (1966: 251). In reality, it seems impossible to combine technical rigour with even modest amounts of political debate. Leys goes further: 'the underlying concept of planning contradicts the basic concept of politics' (1972: 62); its procedures do not take account of basic conflicts of interest, or the fact that planners themselves are a distinct - and highly influential - political group. A common image of planning techniques is that of a restraining device for unruly politicians: 'it provides a discipline . . . In other words, planning can be used to save the politician from himself (Williams 1972: 40). Particularly in the mixed economies, politicians and policies come and go, but a Plan is presumed to be more durable and more authoritative. 'Planning does not fit well into the timetable of political manoeuvring', Lewis declares; 'Every Government has some ideas that it wants incorporated into a Plan, but a Plan is made not for a Government but for a people, and most of the problems with which it deals are unaffected by changes in the Government' (1966: 250). In this formulation effective plans are more powerful, and more expressive of the public will, than politicians. Should plans serve governments, or should governments serve plans? Technically minded planners readily assume the latter: 'Unfortunately, the public administration of most underdeveloped countries is not well adapted to development planning' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 185). The liberal premise that people control governments and governments control plans is rarely fulfilled in the mixed economies. The assumption is subverted by the premise of planned development that the people need to be reorganised and lack the capacity to reorganise themselves; too often their legitimate governments do not have much greater capacity. The legitimate role of the professional planner is only to advise - a source of confusion and frustration: 'Government should be organized so as to meet the needs of society: it should be designed so as to permit the efficient carrying out of those activities on which society sets great importance' (ibid.). What is this entity 'society', and why should it 'know' better than its own 'government' what is good for it? What is this superior being which 'designs' and 'organises' governments? A Planner, no doubt. The inconsistency of such pleas derives mainly from the fact that planners (especially those who see their task as essentially technical) are continually obliged to presume the conditions which they are seeking to fulfil: a compliant, orderly and efficient society. Professional planners usually feel the need to be both advised and pro93

Structures and processes tected by political leaders, but also to be insulated from them: 'Due to the political perils of the job, it would appear better for the scarce planning technicians to hold the job next to the top one instead of the top job in a technical agency, leaving a buffer for the technicians, who would be free to concentrate on the technical aspects of planning for which only they are fitted by training and experience' (Waterston 1965: 515). Few politicians will find this piece of cost-benefit analysis very flattering, but rather more may be prepared to admit the skill with which senior civil servants ventriloquise their political masters. In any case, a more public status can be very seductive: 'Few planners have demonstrated the "passion for anonymity" required to forego the top job when the opportunity arose to get it' (Waterston 1965: 512). For Lewis, the problem can only be resolved if the 'top job' is held by the head of state but 'As the Prime Minister usually has many other things on his mind, the success of this solution depends on having an executive head of the Planning Agency in whom the Prime Minister has confidence, so that he will intervene only on crucial issues, and will in general throw his weight behind the Agency's proposals even when he has not had time to study them in detail' (1966: 245). Jean Meynaud has argued that 'technical invasion of the administration of public affairs responds to a basic movement in our society, and not to some plot of technologists thirsting for power' (1964: 31). He adds: 'I do not believe that it would be legitimate to attribute the idea of the plan - and the vast socio-political horizons that it opens up - to a calculation of the technician. The plan is an instrument of government which becomes a factor of the technician's power, when its elaboration and execution escape from the stimulus and supervision of political leaders' (op. cit.: 214). We may agree that professional planners, in spite of their own protestations, can never be regarded as 'politically neutral'; but it is very much more difficult to decide whose interests they are pursuing, consciously or unconsciously. The simplest, but least adequate explanation is that they are pursuing their own interests - constructing or capturing a lucrative profession. This is an extremely Machiavellian notion, which may have some truth in the smaller states of the Third World but hardly justifies the elaborate history, structures and procedures of national planning elsewhere. A more conventional explanation would insist that the planners are members of, or a fraction of, a dominant class, and that their political interests (however they may be dressed-up) are the interests of that class. Again, there are some states in which this appears a plausible interpretation, but there are many others in which it is less than satisfactory: class structures are too weak and ill-defined to have any coherent bearing on an activity as complex and pervasive as planning. The most obvious explanation is forced on us: planners are essentially 94

The state and the planners concerned with serving the interests of the state, an entity which is 'relatively' (Miliband 1969) or 'potentially' (Skocpol 1979) discrete from the interests of particular social classes - or from self-interested technocrats. Planners, and government officials generally, spend a great deal of time and energy doing things which do not bear in any detectable way on the wealth, power or welfare of dominant or emergent social classes; to suggest that such actions are part of an elaborate class stratagem is to carry conspiracy theories too far. Frequently the agents of the state do things which are conspicuously against the interests of such classes. If we are to ascribe some discrete interests to the state and its agents we must escape from the notion that it is simply a shell, or an arena within which class interests compete. It is a complex of institutions - an exchequer, an army, a judiciary, and so on - which manages, moderates and constrains the societies in which we now live. But states cannot adequately be defined by their own internal structure or autonomous growth: they are now defined in large measure by one another in what is evidently an arena of competing international interests. They are consequently more durable than any of their component interest groups (as the case of a country like Uganda must testify), and to transform them requires a spectacular social and political upheaval. Ellman notes that it was the relative weakness of class forces in Russia after the 1917 Revolution which accounted for 'the very large role of the state in Russian economic development' subsequently (1979: 83). The pattern in the post-colonial states is not dissimilar, as we shall see when we look more closely at Malaysia in Chapter 5. Alavi (1972) and others have remarked on the relative weakness of class forces and the contrasting 'over-development' of state structures: it was within these structures that the initiatives for economic and social development rested. When competitive politics could not sustain the government of the newly independent territories, the (military) forces of the state were obliged to step in. Although it is clear that different social groups compete for the benefits of planned development, the notion that a particular class 'invented' national planning for its own purposes is historically implausible. There is more evidence to suppose that where a class or narrowly defined interest group 'captures' national planning the process rapidly disintegrates; there are too many other, much less troublesome means of acquiring and consolidating wealth. Herein lies the vulnerability of the planners themselves, and their anxiety to represent themselves as 'merely technicians' with no categoric interests of their own (other than that of 'the state') to pursue; by the same token, planners are characteristically alarmed that 'too much politics' is a process of attrition which ensures not the victory of this interest group or that, but the collapse of planning itself - and with it their own livelihood. 95

Structures and processes A more fashionable and rather more plausible diagnosis would be that, for the majority of states, planning is generated by international interests, emanating from other states. In large measure, this view is borne out by the history of the diffusion and elaboration of planning sketched in Chapter 1. However, it might be no less plausible to argue that planning in poor countries owes as much to 'the development of a fraternity of planners, part of the "Technocratic Internationale" ' (Papanek 1972:178), as to the socialist or capitalist Internationale: In many of the countries with an active and influential planning agency, foreign advisers find a group of kindred spirits, with training, background and, most important, ideology and objectives, very close to theirs. Most planning agency staffs are dominated by professionals who are in favor of economic growth, and, specifically, of as high a growth rate as is politically feasible. Most are concerned with equity, the distribution of costs and benefits among regions and classes, and with economic efficiency, (ibid.)

Papanek notes that such differences of opinion as may arise among planners are more likely to cross-cut nationality lines than to divide locals and expatriates. In the 1950s and 1960s, planning in the colonial and postcolonial states of the Third World was managed mainly by expatriates, a group which contrasted with the young and as yet underqualified local staff (Tinbergen 1964: 106-7). Today, the expatriates are still 'often very influential in the allocation of resources between sectors and in "crystallising" national policy statements and plans' (Stutley 1980: 86). Macroeconomic skills are still much in demand, and are regarded as readily transferable from country to country, but in consultancy increasing emphasis is being placed on specialised tasks like national accounting, manpower planning, and project design and evaluation (ibid.). Absurdities like the preparation of the Ten-Year Plan (1961-2 to 1970-1) for Sudan are becoming a rarity; this was 'prepared by two foreign technicians and the document was written and printed in English. Once the plan was prepared, the planning organization was disbanded and planning ceased' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 21). Planning by disinterested foreigners may be as fruitless as planning by zealously partisan nationals. The expatriates who prepared the national plans of the 1950s and 1960s seem mostly to have dispersed into the universities and the international bureaucracy: Mike Faber, Zambia's first Director of Planning (1964-8); Wolfgang Stolper, the 'main author' of Nigeria's 1962-8 Plan (Helleiner 1966: 335); Brian van Arkadie who, before teaching at Sussex, Cambridge and The Hague and joining the OECD, was a member of the Directorate of Planning established to draw up Tanzania's First FiveYear Plan (1964-9). All three have written valuable critical and theoretical studies of development planning, but none of them has been 96

Ideal and reality sufficiently indiscreet about their own experiences to inform us adequately of the 'micro-politics' and informal processes of their work. There seems to have been a broad inter-continental distinction in the extent to which foreigners have directed national planning. The Indian sub-continent has had more qualified personnel of its own; the ECLA and other organisations have incorporated quite large numbers of Latin Americans; African countries, however, have been inundated with expatriates, although over the last decade there has been extensive Africanisation of senior posts. In Kenya the twenty-two professional posts in the Planning Division were 'overwhelmingly Kenyanized' by the early 1970s (IBRD 1975: 391), but large numbers of expatriates continue to work in the ministerial planning units, in special agencies like the Canadian-sponsored Project Identification and Evaluation Unit (set up in 1970), and in particular projects. The large planning unit in Kenya's Agriculture Ministry had seventeen expatriate advisers and seven permanent staff posts; for the IBRD this was too many, even though the ministry had 14,000 employees (op. cit.: 392-7). Although the proportion of expatriates to nationals has dropped quite sharply, there can be no doubt that their overall numbers have steadily increased. They have been accommodated by the relentless expansion of the development bureaucracies and are less conspicuous only because they have moved away from the central offices. Expatriates now pervade ostensibly more humble organisations where they are less exposed politically but where their technical expertise still allows them great influence. For example, pressure for the devolution of planning in a country like Kenya has tended to follow the permeation of the expatriates downwards through ministries, regions and districts, and into project offices. While qualified middle-class Africans are promoted upwards to regional and central agencies - and into the niches reserved for them in international organisations - qualified middle-class Europeans and Americans gravitate enthusiastically downwards towards the 'grass roots' where their presence, as Robert Chambers has vividly explained (1980), contributes to the widening social and cultural gap between the agents of the state and the people. The planning process: ideal and reality

Planning is an attempt to translate ideas into reality. It is normative, an attempt to give substance to aspirations; it is thus always exposed to the risk of disappointment and failure. National development planning is an effort to deploy the power, resources and organisation of the state to realise certain ambitions. It is a collective act of faith and optimism which tends to achieve less than is hoped. A conspicuous failure of national 97

Structures and processes planning, it could be said, is that it has not sufficiently anticipated the probability of its own failure. According to Arthur Lewis, planning originates not in arithmetic, but 'in the light of a general philosophy of how development takes place; this philosophy underlies the guesses which must be made in assessing individual projects' (1966: 20). In ideal form, planning is usually seen as progressing from some authoritative vision of the future - a national ideology - to a range of more specific policies, which are translated into activities through the medium of the plan, and which create the changes envisaged at the outset. In a capricious world, the problems of maintaining a degree of coherence in this process are formidable. In many states the lack of control is evident from the outset, in weak, derivative and inchoate national ideology. From a practical perspective on planning in India, Hanson has a very clear idea about the function of ideology: 'As "a set of doctrines about the proper methods to attain economic progress", an ideology of some kind is indispensable. Pure empiricism is an unattainable and unacceptable ideal' (1966: 20): In the context of economic planning, an ideology normally has three interrelated roles to play, viz. (1) to indicate objectives and prescribe the general strategic line of advance; (2) to persuade the masses that these represent a 'general will' and should therefore be supported as a matter of moral duty as well as one of selfinterest; and (3) to give the elite that has conceived the plan and accepted responsibility for its implementation a self-confidence and a capacity for dynamic action based on a sense of its own 'historic mission'. (Hanson 1966: 18)

Ideology has been the subject of a wide variety of interpretations in social science. Its association with power, notably that of the state, is perhaps its most important and most generally accepted attribute. For marxists, it is part of the institutional 'superstructure' of economic formations, and thus an instrument of the dominant interests in society: whether it is 'right' or not depends on which class holds power, and in capitalist social formations ideology is 'false consciousness' serving the interests of the dominant bourgeoisie. Karl Mannheim (1936) took the broader view that ideology, as a social construct, cannot be absolute; characteristically, it is a fiction by which states operate, a necessary part of the apparatus by which social order is maintained but at the same time a device which veils the 'true' nature of society. According to Geertz, 'ideology bridges the gap between things as they are and as one would have them be' (1964: 55); for the state, it is a declaration of aspirations, and an insistence that these are the only valid aspirations: 'ideology names the structure of situations in such a way that the attitude toward them is one of commitment' (op. cit.:71). Ideologies advocate ideals which may not be readily observable in 98

Ideal and reality mundane human activities, and give them labels (democracy, prosperity, liberty, equality) which have an emotional, if not a rational appeal. 'Ideologies seek to connect the universe of values with the universe of power' (Beteille 1978: 47) - hence their political instrumentality. An ideology is plainly something more general than a 'political interest', the competitive desires of a particular group or category of people. It is also something less general than 'culture' - an omnibus description of the ideas and values proper to a 'society' at large. Gellner has explained that although ideologies claim ultimacy, providing the 'very criterion for telling truth from falsehood' and seeking to 'monopolise validation' (1978: 73-4), they are nevertheless formed and perpetuated within a broader framework of language, values and discourse, from which they extract their meaning: they 'naively accept the rules, conventions and norms of some other world within which they operate, attract clients and endeavour to peddle themselves' (op. cit.: 75). We have been at pains here to stress the instrumentality of ideology in order to draw attention to its directive role in development planning, and to make it clear that while it necessarily has an appearance of absoluteness, it is in fact relative, contingent and subject to change. It may be manipulated almost as if it were an economic resource - a factor which is as likely to be to the detriment of planning as to its benefit: Ideology is inseparably linked to time . . . For the regime, ideology is a delaying mechanism - a time-gaining device, which is used because of the shortage of goods and services . . . Ideology, then, is the cheapest, but least reliable, means which a hard-pressed regime can use to sustain itself. (Nellis 1970: 425) To some, this may seem an unreasonably cynical view of the motives underlying planned development. However, we would argue that planning must be predicated on some ideology, even though this varies greatly in its specificity, coherence and the extent to which it is insisted upon by particular regimes. The formulation of an ideology for development is an almost superhuman task, but one which has frequently been attempted by the political leaders of developing countries. More generally, development ideology is an historical outgrowth - a subject to which we shall return in Chapter 4. There we shall argue that, insofar as the contemporary institution of national development planning has a distinctive and generalised ideology of its own, it may be given the objective label 'Populism'. For policy-makers and planners, making some practical sense of the ideologies insisted upon by political leaders can be a complex and hazardous business. The skilled bureaucrat or technician will take the vague rhetoric of ideology, or of policy, and translate it into operable terms of his own. This is indeed a powerful role, and it is hardly surprising that pro99

Structures and processes fessional planners have acquired, in some states, almost mystical authority. Their efforts to give substance to elusive political ideals in a future which is inherently uncertain gives their work a magical appearance. In an illuminating article, Parkin (1975) has outlined the intellectual and linguistic processes which are required in translating the inherently vague ideology into a plan which is the basis for constructive action: purposes and targets have to be made specific, instructions have to be more technical than emotional, and directed towards specific groups of people rather than the population at large. The language of a plan is necessarily more terse and more explicit, issuing instructions to the particular agencies which are charged with the responsibility for executing particular projects. Policy may have an intermediate role between ideology and planning, being more specific than the former but lacking the detailed instructions of the latter. Policy may be expressed in a nutshell, as the objectives of India's Fourth Plan (1969-74) suggest: 'rapid economic development accompanied by continuous progress towards equality and social justice and the establishment of a social and economic democracy' (Minhas 1972: 25). As Minhas notes, the phrase 'social and economic democracy' is, to say the least, equivocal, symptomatic of the indecision in India about the choice between a socialist and a free-market economy. Erring on the side of caution, the Planning Commission translated this into a restrained noninflationary plan which aimed to keep food prices stable while at the same time pursuing greater independence from foreign aid. It expressed this in terms of three basic pieces of arithmetic: targets of 5% p.a. in the growth of agricultural output, 7% in export growth, and a 50% reduction in net aid by the end of the quinquennium. In this Plan, Griffin and Enos can detect a laudable degree of integration between national ideals and detailed planning targets: for example, the plan tabulates specific targets for the numbers of children to be educated within the five-year period, which responds to the more general 'goal' (policy) of free and compulsory education in particular age-groups, which in turn responds to an ideological commitment ('Aspiration') to justice and equality (Griffin & Enos 1970: 33). It is notable that this version of the Fourth Plan followed the collapse of an earlier Draft, and was put together at a time when 'planning had lost a good deal of political support' (Minhas 1972: 24). A Planning Commission with an entirely new membership was confronted by a formidable task: 'to review past trends in development, reorganize the planning effort, appraise the operational significance of changes in the political, social and economic situation for national planning, redefine the objectives and strategy of planning, and prepare a programme of medium- and long-term development to achieve chosen objectives' (ibid.). 100

Ideal and reality 'A plan is a means, not an end' (Waterston 1965:105). In its pursuit of integration, it seeks to create a series of links outwards from political and economic centres to the administrators of particular development projects, and to the public. It is also a set of temporal relationships, a sequence of procedures operating in timespans of different duration: ideology reaches back into the history of a particular state and forward into its future, whereas policies, plans and projects usually occupy progressively shorter timespans. Planners are greatly exercised by these spatial, temporal and political 'linkages', and seek to bring them within formal, technical control (v. Duloy 1974). Coherent linkages are of the essence in the 'command' style of planning, and their elusiveness in the mixed economies is one of the main reasons why 'indicative' planning fails. Planning asserts national integration, but its outcomes of course depend on the real connections between organisations and their activities. Loose, capricious, short-term planning has no place in a big 'hard' state; small states intent on national planning are much more subject to the vagaries of the world around them, and their plans may be derailed by natural disaster or market fluctuations. For example, Malta's 1964-9 Plan was preoccupied not with long-range policies but with maintaining employment levels after the sudden drastic reduction of British military expenditure in the island (Waterston 1965: 146). The pattern of integration underlying the normative processes of planning is argued very strongly in 'The Five Unifiers' which have guided efforts in China. These are: ideological understanding, uniting the interests of the state and the people; the consistent application of policy to each phase of development and to each problem; the full co-ordination and reconciliation of interests withinf&plan\coherent and efficient direction by the leadership from one level to the next; and concerted action, the mobilisation of working people at every level (R. Berger 1979: 181). In 1964, the celebrated Dutch economist Jan Tinbergen proposed this idealised sequence of planning procedures: I The Macro-Stage 1. Instruction of planning bureau by government on aims and means of policy 2. Collection of statistics and forecasts on 'data' 3. Macro-forecast (choice of a rate of growth) 4. Confrontation with aims 5. Macro-plan II The Sector (and/or Regional) Stage 1. Collection of estimates on income elasticities 2. Sector plan, or regional plan, or both 101

Structures and processes III The Project Stage 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Issue of directives to 'cells', request for projects Project appraisal by sector authorities Project appraisal by centre Revised sector-cum-region plan Consultation with sectors Consultation with regions Changes Submission to government

IV Final Stage 1. Possible changes; adoption by government 2. Publication 3. Adoption by parliament

(Tinbergen 1964: 88-9)

Leys remarks that this is 'certainly a good account of what most people mean when they refer to "comprehensive" planning' (1969: 249). Critics of such a view have pointed out that it studiously ignores the political (and cultural) contexts of particular countries. However, an alternative which gives sufficient recognition to the absence or ineptitude of policies emanating from outside central planning agencies has proved difficult to specify. A solution suggested by Charles Lindblom (1965) has been described as 'disjointed incrementalism'; this gave planners the more limited and supposedly more realistic task of identifying projects which differed only marginally from the status quo or from one another - very much a gradualist (incremental) approach. It emphasised remedial rather than progressive policies, called for persistent reconsideration, by as wide a range of interests as possible, of every detail of the plan. This is reminiscent of Indian planning efforts in the 1960s, and of Nehru's pronouncement that 'the method of planning is ultimately the method of trial and error' (Hanson 1966: 105). For Leys (1969: 252) the approach is too fragmentary and too evasive politically to justify the label 'planning'. Once it has become established, the procedures of a planning commission become routinised and continuous, making it almost impossible to identify a time at which the preparation of a plan 'begins'. It usually goes through several processes of drafting and redrafting, as targets are suggested, new projects proposed and agreed upon, and the component parts made consistent with one another. At the same time, the agency is planning within several different timespans: the long-range or 'perspective' plan extending over fifteen or twenty years, the main medium-term plan, usually five years, and annual plans which 'operationalise' the fiveyear plans in relation to the national budget. There is usually a persistent flow of information back and forth between these plans, long-term 102

Ideal and reality perspectives being modified as the experience of each year's activities is monitored. A medium-term plan may be said to 'begin' when official policy, statistics and economic models are put together in the form of a set of forecasts or projections, usually involving the specification of a rate of growth for the economy at large and for particular sectors, in terms of resources which will be available for investment, aid, trade, fiscal arrangements and so on. An existing development plan provides a point of departure for most of these considerations. Having set out general guidelines, the agency then calls for detailed proposals from subsidiary bodies: in the mixed economies these are usually planning units in the ministries of agriculture, industry, commerce etc., regional and district administrations, and major private and public industries; in the major socialist economies proposals are elicited from production units grouped regionally or sectorally. Collecting, collating and evaluating these proposals is the major task of the central agency. New projects have to be appraised in terms of their capital cost, rates of return and relevance to the plan as a whole and to national policy. At this stage it may be necessary to revise targets, to ginger-up this region or that ministry, or even to begin the round of consultation again. The finance ministry or treasury must approve the costing of the plan, the relationship between resources to be invested and calculated output (the capital:output ratio). At this stage the Plan itself is produced for public inspection. It often recapitulates the process just described, summarising national economic conditions, reviewing government policies and the progress of previous plans, explains national economic projections, lists proposed projects and programmes of expenditure in education, health and other social services, and specifies the time schedules and machinery for putting these into effect. An indicative plan for a mixed economy will discuss likely private sector developments and specify production targets. The plan is submitted to the government for approval and thereafter it is usually published. Its size and the amount of detail included differ greatly from country to country: Yugoslavia aims for succinctness in around fifty pages; Pakistan's First Five-Year Plan extended to half a million words, while Chile's first Ten-Year Plan consisted of six volumes divided into twenty books; the prize-winner must be Indonesia's Eight-Year Plan published in 1945 which appeared in 17 volumes containing 1,945 paragraphs (Waterston 1965: 112-13). 'Unfortunately', Waterston remarks, 'there are indications that an inverse correlation exists between the bulk of a development plan and the success achieved in attaining its targets' (op. cit.: 113). A plan is ultimately judged in terms of its measurable effects on the economy at large, an aggregate assessment in which the failure of particu103

Structures and processes lar projects or the performance of a whole sector may be excused. However, planning agencies are also evaluated in terms of the detail, thoroughness and orthodoxy of their procedures. Officials of the World Bank have a clear idea of the proprieties of planning, which they apply in their evaluation of procedures in countries like Kenya: The emphasis in macro-economic planning has tended to be on the production of the published plan, at the expense of the plan as an implementable program of action. The private sector has been incorporated only peripherally; plans have little project content; policy proposals are not always previously agreed upon; and plan programs have been frequently disregarded during subsequent preparation of budgets. Commitment to the plans has been weak, from the point of view of the active participation of both people and the politicians. Even the major operating ministries have not always participated fully in the preparation of plans or monitored the implementation of their own programs. (IBRD 1975: 387)

However important orderly procedures may be, it is clear that an agency which is responsible for charting the future of a country must itself be innovative, pragmatic and flexible. This is recognised as a problem in that most experienced country, the USSR, which struggles continuously against the stultifying effects of bureaucratic growth. Established procedures in the Soviet Union are basically very similar to those essayed in a country like Kenya, and outlined in the above paragraphs. Planning 'begins' with much the same assembly of policy, statistics and forecasts, but the experience of a lengthy sequence of previous plans is particularly important. New plans 'are normally based on the outcome of the previous period with a few per cent added on' (Ellman 1979: 21). An outline plan for the five-year period specifies preliminary production and investment targets, on which more detailed proposals for specific enterprises are based. The enterprises receive, amend and adjust these proposals which are then returned up the planning hierarchy to GOSPLAN, the national agency. When GOSPLAN has produced a coherent revision of the plan it is ratified by party bodies in the Union and the States. The party plays an important role in the whole process, 'prodding' the production units and preventing them from 'slackening' targets. The plan finally appears in the form of a book several hundred pages long, and its component parts are then passed down to designated 'addresses'; all being well, the production units receive their instructions in sufficient time to meet the prescribed deadlines (Ellman 1979: 20-1). By the mid-1960s, planning procedures in India had acquired a degree of complexity which few countries, if any, could match; they are outlined with admirable brevity by Hanson (1966: 530). India probably has a historical proclivity for bureaucratic proliferation, but the problems of the Planning Commission have undoubtedly been compounded by a concern for copious 'democratic' consultation which has multiplied committees, 104

Ideal and reality and by the federal structure of the country. Each plan has not simply followed precedent, but has been formed by pragmatic responses to the exigencies of a world which is sadly much more disordered than planners and policy-makers would wish. The drafting of India's Fourth Plan, described by Hanson in illuminating detail (1968: 21-5) makes this very clear. The Perspective Plan for 1961-72 was completed in August 1964, and on the basis of this the Planning Commission's Technical Divisions prepared sectoral papers. The Commissioners responsible for each of these papers met individually with Prime Minister Shastri to explain the details, which were discussed by four Parliamentary groups. In September there was a full meeting of the Commission to consider the 'total size and pattern of the plan' in the light of working-party reports, new data, etc., and a paper on the 'Size and Pattern of Investment in the Fourth Five-Year Plan' was drafted and sent to the Cabinet. The next step was the production of a draft of the plan itself - described at this stage as a Memorandum. This was sent to the Cabinet, the National Development Council (to which in official terms the Planning Commission was responsible) and to a select committee of MPs. At this stage, the Prime Minister decided that five new committees should be set up to advise on detailed aspects of each sector in the plan. In January 1965 the governments of the Indian states were asked to submit their own plan Memoranda, in accordance with the general outlines of the national plan. To come to grips authoritatively with the volume of detail which was building up, a new National Planning Council was established by the Cabinet, consisting of the full-time members of the Planning Commission plus seventeen experts from outside: 'its purpose was to enable a "small body of specialists" to "work in close and continuous association with the Planning Commission". At its first meeting, on 22 April, it established twelve study groups "for detailed consideration of selected problems relating to various sectors of development" ' (Hanson 1968: 22). By the summer, the mid-term appraisal of the Third Plan was available, adding new grist to the NPC's mill; in September 1965 its revision of the draft Fourth Plan was ready. It is sobering to discover that at this point the Plan had accomplished less than half of its trajectory to completion and ratification. On precedent a further sequence of consultation, reformulation, liaison with the states, parliamentary debate and re-evaluation still confronted the Planning Commission. As it happened, the process was cut short dramatically by the outbreak of war with Pakistan. The Prime Minister asked the Planning Commission for a drastic reappraisal and, as the procedure was already well behind schedule, it was agreed to rush through a One-Year Plan to cover 1966-7 - the first year of the proposed Fourth Plan. Responding to the emergency, it called for cutbacks in investment and 105

Structures and processes gave preference to projects which promised a rapid rate of return; it was ratified by both houses of Parliament by April 1966. A year later, the Fourth Plan had still not been finalised. Planning ideas: symbols and languages

Professionals have common standards and objectives, and speak a common language; hence they reach agreement more easily than politicians. (Lewis 1966: 252) If he were invited to explain a development plan, an anthropologist would probably begin by identifying it as a symbolic system. He would readily assume that the plan was not itself the reality about which it spoke, but a complex metaphor for that reality. It would remind him of other symbolic systems, grand and trivial, which help to categorise the social life of human beings and make it more intelligible: mythologies which explain the cosmos and man's place in it, music, or shopping lists (v. Leach 1976). He would be interested in the internal logic of the symbols of planning, and their relationship to other major symbolic systems like religious beliefs or that broader fabric of social ideas usually called 'culture'. A national development plan is, at least in the political sense, an important symbolic system; it is painstakingly constructed and concerns the use of state power to manipulate resources within finite periods of time for particular (mainly economic) purposes. Mainly for the historical reasons set out in Chapter 1, the symbolism of planning in one country is very similar to that in another country: we may say that an international language of planning has developed, which helps to make the development efforts of particular countries internationally intelligible - a matter of some significance in soliciting aid and foreign investment. This language is itself a pastiche of other symbolic systems: econometrics, statistics, biology, physics, this or that kind of socialism, the vernaculars of particular countries, professions and disciplines. It is a complex system with a complex purpose: to deliver a prescriptive message about the future of a particular nation. This preoccupation with the future puts the symbolism of planning at a greater distance from reality than, for example, the symbolism of news bulletins. Nevertheless, one of the most fervent desires of the planner is to ensure that his symbols - graphs, formulae, or pieces of prose approximate the outcomes of planning as closely as possible. Planning depends on a creed of scientific accuracy: the fates of policies, politicians and the entire population of a country rely on exact representations of the future, and of how that future is to be attained. It is therefore understandable that the complex metaphor of planning is often misread as factitive. Griffin and Enos have drawn attention to the symbolic nature of the 106

Symbols and languages plan, and have pointed out that the broader process of planning involves the use of many different 'languages' which must in some way be reconciled (1970:196). The problems of 'translation' which arise, and the scope for misunderstanding, are immense. One of the most conspicuous language barriers is between macro- and micro-economics, between aggregate statements of policy and the detailed organisation of specific development projects. It appears that more mundane, generalised usage is unable to cope efficiently with the complex ideas of planning, and specialists have sought instead some refined 'meta-language' which will enable everyone involved to talk to each other more coherently. For example, Janos Kornai has insisted on the dangers of confusing the economics of the market with the economics of planning, and on the need for a ' "separate language" with its own vocabulary and grammar' (1979: 92) for the latter. It is clear that the language of planning which has emerged has had some success in enabling people to comprehend and manipulate the real world, but it has also obscured reality and rendered it inaccessible: The form of idolatry most deleterious to rational and coherent planning is the belief, which the [Indian Planning] Commission appears to hold in the Power of the Word . . . Once a target, however unrealistic, has been selected, it is regarded as at least half-way towards realization. How else can one explain the persistence with which the Commission, in setting its sights, gives itself the benefit of every possible doubt? Optimism is the occupational disease of planners . . . (Hanson 1968: 40)

To an anthropologist, the confidence with which planners must necessarily deploy the symbols at their disposal is very evocative of Malinowski's account of the primitive magician: The most important element in magic is the spell . . . The formula is always the core of the magical performance . . . Very conspicuous in primitive spells, is the use of words which invoke, state, or command the desired aim . . . In healing magic the wizard will give word pictures of perfect health and bodily strength. In economic magic the growing of plants, the approach of animals, the arrival offish is shoals are depicted. (Malinowski 1954: 73-4).

In his critical study of the Tennessee Valley Authority, Selznick drew attention to 'The similarities between the glittering generalities of a sermon or political harangue and the apparently technical devices of administrative relationship' (1949: 59). Frequently used words like 'coordination' and 'unity' are of instrumental value more for their emotive force than for their technical meaning: 'Ideological symbols may fulfil useful functions of communication and defense and may long be sustained as meaningful even when effective criteria of judgement remain lacking'; but they have little value in prescribing a course of action (op. cit.: 69). According to Selznick, the TVA 'grass roots theory', ostensibly 107

Structures and processes a technical device for linking the people 'democratically' with the Authority, 'became a protective ideology': 'Organizations, like men, are at crucial times involved in an attempt to close the gap between what they wish to do and what they can do. It is natural that, in due course, the struggle should be resolved in favor of a reconciliation between the desire and the ability . . . insecurity summons ideological reinforcements' (op. cit.:48). It is certainly a function of jargon to communicate complex meanings concisely - in what linguists would call a 'restricted code'; however jargon also encapsulates conveniently ideas or sensations which are vague or defy more exact definition. This may actually enhance, rather than diminish, the power of the word. The rhetoric of development is most plainly evident in the slogans used by political leaders to galvanise their subject populations into concerted action: for example Harambee 'a watchword coined by Kenyatta, meaning, roughly, "all pull together" ' (Leys 1975: 75); Kenneth Kaunda's Zambian hymn 'Tiyende Pamodzi\ 'Let us go forward together'; and Gotong Royong, a phrase devised by Sukarno for Indonesia, urging the 'collective bearing of burdens' (Geertz 1964: 67). In the early 1970s, William Tolbert's battle-cry for Liberian development was Total Involvement for Higher Heights in a Wholesome, Functioning Society, a slogan which evokes in a startlingly explicit way Rostow's image of 'take-off, and the evolutionary functionalist's ideals of integration. Some countries re-label their development efforts with bewildering frequency: a headline in the Sunday Times of Malaysia (6 August 1972) reads 'After Maju (Success) and Jay a Diri (Self-Reliance) a new drive: Gerakan Pembaharuan - The watchword is "Renewal"!' Few countries have exhibited greater enthusiasm for this kind of hortatory language than Indonesia, influenced by that great eclectic ideologue Sukarno. New words have been created, for example Berdikari, an ellipsis of Berdm dz'atas kak\ sendin, 'standing on your own two feet' (Palmer 1977:10). Many countries have an enthusiasm for acronyms, which seems to go further than a desire for abbreviation; they may add a kind of algebraic power to an idea or organisation which is otherwise weak, or the full title may be adjusted so that its initials make up a catchy word or phrase. Indonesia has persistently sought invigorating labels for its development efforts, changing, abbreviating and re-compounding slogans, and reducing them to acronyms: Demas (Demonstrasi Massal mass demonstration work by agricultural extension officers) was followed in 1965 by Bimas (5/mbingan Massal - an expanded version of Demas 'mass guidance'), later Bimas berdikari (1967), Bimas gotong royong (1968-70) and eventually KUD (Koperasi Unit Desa - the idea of Bimas applied to village co-operative organisation) (Palmer 1977: 21-2). 108

Symbols and languages Many political slogans have no technical pretensions: the battle-cry of the Mexican Partido Revolucinario institutional is arriba y adelante! 'forward and upward!' - a vague but elevating notion to which almost any policy could be accommodated. A political catechism published by the government of Guyana (1975) warns of' Phrase-mongering -use of catchy words or terms that catch the people's attention but have no real meaning or offer no real programme to help the people with their problems' (op. cit.: 12). The booklet continues to sort out the vocabulary of which the government does and does not approve, for example: 'Socialism - a system under which people are able to feed, clothe and house themselves, and enjoy a good life through their own collective efforts with the help of their government' (op. cit.: 21). Presumably only the simple-minded would take the more colourful slogans at face value. However, the use of rhetoric in such expressly technical processes as planning requires more serious consideration. Phrases like 'Central Guidance Cluster' or 'Integrated Rural Development Project' presume a degree of control which may be lacking in reality. The facility with which authoritative phrases may be generated, and the limited meanings which they convey, are illustrated in Appendix D. No matter how skilfully it is contrived, an Optimum Child Care Package (Nordberg et al. 1975) will be something less than its label indicates. The phrase belongs firmly within the language of planning, and translation into an African vernacular would raise interesting problems - although it might illuminate what was actually in the 'Package'. (An English speaker, with no prior knowledge of this particular health project, might be tempted to offer the simple translation 'Mother'.) If it is a characteristic of political rhetoric to carry meanings which do not relate directly to concrete actions, and to be comprehended more with the heart than with the head, a plan must be more exact and more clearly prescriptive if it is to serve as a realistic guide for action (v. Parkin 1975). However, since it is also a function of the plan to persuade people to cooperate and collaborate, since it has to serve as a 'manifesto' (Griffin & Enos 1970: 197), the language cannot simply be coldly technical. Moreover, the plan may have to gloss over important differences of interest and opinion, and to appeal for consensus in grandiloquent terms. It is well known that in national, and more conspicuously in international politics, the art is to say as little as possible as convincingly as possible. This is one reason why development planning can be a very elusive object of research; Adler has commented on the difficulty he experienced in extracting unequivocal opinions and attributable quotations from officials of the World Bank: 'Because the Bank is an international organization and published Bank documents are supposed to reflect the views 109

Structures and processes of all its member countries, or at least not to offend their views (however divergent they may be), their language is inevitably bland and circumspect' (1973: 31n). At the level of development projects the language of planning must be precise and explicit. Colin Leys (1969) distinguishes three kinds of development objective: the specific, which admits only one way of being met (3,000 completed tractors by 30 January); the categoric, where activities are not specified in detail and goals are indicated only in general terms, as in aggregate consumption figures; and the hypothetical, which are residual expectations based on the realisation of other kinds of objective. Leys points out that 'It is the specific objectives which make -&plan possible - that provide targets to which action may be directed - and although for some purposes it may be convenient to conceive of them as means to the attainment of categoric objectives, they are psychologically and causally primary' (1969: 257). Much of the critical literature on development is about the failure to make objectives sufficiently specific, and particularly the failure to define projects in sufficient detail. In Leys' terms, a categoric objective in a perspective plan - for example pcGNP of $250 by 1985 - may be treated a priori as an accomplished fact; while other calculations may be based on this figure, the specific objectives by which it is to be achieved may not have been spelled out. The logic of the symbolic system has broken down. The World Bank mission to Kenya (IBRD 1975) argued very strongly for the need to 'demystify' planning, and to make its symbolic language much more exact: 'sector plans must be practical programs of action, not merely statements of philosophy' (op. cit.: 388). The mission warned that 'there is a real danger . . . that a macro-economic model may end up as no more than a mathematical toy with which econometricians play' (op. cit.: 86), and that 'the prevalent conception in many operating ministries that "planning" is a mysterious, and perhaps even dangerous, activity best left to "planners" is a serious obstacle to development in Kenya' (op. cit.: 389n). At the same time, the mission recognised that planning is addressed to future outcomes which are inherently uncertain, and that no amount of technical precision can guarantee these outcomes: 'In particular, we stress that [our] projections do not purport to predict the future, but merely seek to indicate the likely direction of the economy in response to alternative policy measures' (op. cit.: xii). Thus it seems that the World Bank's own recommendations remain at the level of categoric and hypothetical objectives. In the following sections we shall examine in more detail the technical categories (the specialised symbolic languages) which planners have used in coming to grips with people and economic resources, and with the elusive factor of time. In this section we have drawn attention to the 110

Targets and phases ambiguity that, although national planning depends very heavily on a presumption of scientific rationality, its language and symbols are not 'neutral' modes of communication but have a power of their own: a power to persuade, to disguise, to manipulate or evade. They may even have the power to make planning an end in itself: 'One may publish a Plan to please the public, or to please foreign aid administrators, without ever intending implementation' (Lewis 1966: 147). Planning time: targets and phases Entering into every economic decision is the factor of time, which can be stated simply as the choice between doing something today or doing it in the future. (Griffin & Enos 1970: 39)

The perplexity of any kind of planning is its concern with the future, and the fact that for ordinary mortals the future is unascertainable. To plan one must predict, and to predict one requires faith as well as reliable techniques. It is the necessity to forecast which distinguishes planning from budgeting, the allocation of available resources among immediate or short-term needs. Planning has to gauge the availability of resources in the future, as well as to specify lengthy sequences for their allocation among competing needs. The further ahead one proposes to plan, the more hazardous the process becomes (v. Lipton 1971: 267). Planning techniques, devised mainly by economists, chop time up into periods which seem appropriate for the manipulation of resources. All time units (second, month, semester, yuga) are social constructs, but some become so involved in technical processes that they acquire an appearance of scientific absoluteness. Even physicists, more concerned with temporal precision than most of us, are obliged to depend on arbitrary definition of the morphological units of time. In countries which take these things seriously, 'The Plan' and its component phases become a chronometer for public life; alas, chronometers are as fallible as other man-made objects, and the pace of life is obdurate. A National Plan excises from the future a fixed number of years: 'It has often been pointed out that the period of five years was arbitrarily adopted by many countries in imitation of the Soviet Union, whose planners allegedly adopted it on the crude basis of hoping to embrace a harvest cycle of one good harvest, one bad harvest and three average harvests' (Leys 1972: 75). 'The Plan' usually takes its basic criteria from a longer 'perspective' plan, extending for as many as twenty years into the future. 'The perspective plan is a planners' plan', Griffin and Enos explain; 'It is seldom published . . . It is really a frame in which operational plans - the Development Plan and the Annual Plan - are set' (1970: 196). Griffin and Enos describe the medium-term plan as a 'manifesto', a statement of intentions which is 111

Structures and processes made available to the public; it is the business of the Annual Plan or budget to specify in detail the necessary investments, fiscal arrangements, etc., which 'operationalise' the national plan. For a National Plan there is a practical need for a period 'short enough to permit reasonably accurate projections and estimates to be made and long enough to cover the lead time or gestation period of a sufficient number of major projects . . . The longer the term of a plan, the more uncertain and questionable the projections and the less the degree of precision possible' (Waterston 1965: 124). India's first perspective plan covered thirty years, but this was reduced to a more realistic fifteen years from the period of the Third Five-Year Plan onwards (op. cit.: 131). Few countries have the political and economic strength, or the temerity, to extend their planning horizons beyond twenty years. While the majority of countries have opted for the five-year period for their National Plans, longer and shorter periods have also been used. However, it seems that most departures from the neat formula 1/5/10/15 years have been forced on tidy-minded planners by extraneous factors like natural disasters, economic or political crisis, or the need to coordinate national efforts with those of other states. A major aid programme covering several countries can rearrange planning schedules: the Marshall Aid programme called on the European countries to produce matching four-year plans, and Asian states participating in Britain's Colombo Plan were asked to plan for the six years, 1951-7. Kenya had a 3Vi year plan from 1954-7 to bring it into line with the other East African countries. In times of crisis (as was the case with India's Fourth Plan, described above) or to establish a greater degree of economic control (as in Yugoslavia, between 1952 and 1956) the National Plan may be reduced to one-year periods. As Leys remarks, 'the idea that there is one best period for all planning in all sectors of activity' is more a product of bureaucratic rigidity than of good sense (1972: 75). Even in the Soviet Union, where planning has become highly bureaucratised, the five-year formula is less sacrosanct than it once was, and plans are broken down into a variety of shorter periods according to the nature of the activity or enterprise. The exigencies of planning industry led to the adoption of a seven-year period in the USSR, and later to a twenty-year time horizon (Waterston 1965: 125). Schedules now form complex 'nesting' patterns, extending from the twenty-year perspective plan, to fifteen-year, ten-year, five-year, oneyear, three-month, one-month, ten-day and twenty-four-hour plans (Ellmanl979:27). One of the enigmas of our understanding of time is that we seem unable to construe it in anything other than static categories; even quite simple processes can be grasped only by reducing them to a sequence of 112

Targets and phases individual stages, like the frames of a cine film. History is represented as a series of tableaux (periods, epochs, events), and the future is represented in plans as targets, goals, indices and phases, perhaps woven together into more elaborate structures labelled 'programmes' or (a cant word of the 1970s) 'scenarios' (v. IBRD 1975: 104). Although Soviet planners use targets and goals more assiduously than anyone, it is clear that such static images are very amenable to the analytical devices of 'neoclassical', equilibrium economics. 'Proper' development is an orderly progression from one balanced state to another, and mathematical charts of each destination can be drawn up. Each movement is usually called a 'phase', a term which refers to the routine cycle of planning or project management rather than to a fragment of 'real' historical time: it does not describe the period within which people actually make themselves at home in a new settlement scheme, it describes the time allotted to moving them and their belongings to the site. However planners choose to chop time up, life goes on, 'timed' in an enormous variety of ways: individual and family life cycles, agricultural calendars, ritual cycles, presidential terms of office, and so on. It is not often easy for planners to ensure that their time categories prevail over those which other people use to organise their lives. The target is the most commonly used device: it is a numerical expression of how much should be invested, produced or consumed, or by how much incomes should rise, within a finite period of time. It may be used at the aggregate level of fixing annual increments in the Gross National Product, or to specify seasonal yields within an agricultural development project. Waterston points out that a target is something more than an estimate, projection or forecast; it implies and depends upon the existence of realistic means for bringing it into effect - it is an instruction (1965: 169). 'Targets' which lack this quality are a waste of breath: in Guinea's Three-Year Plan (1960-3), annual increases of 16% in the GDP, 70% in industrial output and 60% in capital formation were specified, without any indication of how these extravagant 'targets' could realistically be pursued (Waterston 1965: 158). The targets which punctuate a programme or project serve no useful purpose if they are not clearly linked to one another, and if no realistic path, from year to year or month to month, can be traced between them. It is reasonable to expect that different kinds of activity will have to be scheduled in different ways, even if their achievements may have to be measured as an ensemble at one-, five- or ten-year intervals. A particular problem in project design and assessment is that many important benefits and costs may accrue after a targeted completion date; this is particularly the case with the broader 'social' costs and benefits which cannot easily be 113

Structures and processes quantified. Hirschman, who has examined temporal linkages in some detail, includes this aspect of planning in his 'principle of the hiding hand' (1967: 9ff.). Planners never have enough information, and what they have can never be sufficiently up-to-date. The pursuit of long-term goals is always being subverted by short-term fluctuations and crises. In British efforts to plan in the 1960s, Opie observes gloomily, 'the urgent triumphed as always over the important' (1972: 215). One way of keeping a mediumterm plan realistic and up-to-date is to 'roll' it. This is a device used quite commonly by large business firms and municipal or local governments; it has also been the basis of the six-year planning cycle in Costa Rica. A 'rolling plan' of, say, five years is 'revised at the end of each year and, as the first year of the plan is dropped, estimates, targets and projects for another year are added to the last year' (Waterston 1965: 139-40). Too often, however, a plan has to be 'rolled' by force of circumstance rather than by design: where procedures are complex planners may fall victim to their own scheduling, and the time spent drawing up a plan starts to encroach on the time in which the plan should be operating. Pakistan's First Five-Year Plan, for example, was not completed until the middle of the planning period itself (Griffin & Enos 1970: 213); to keep pace new calculations have to be made, and new targets set. If some countries never get as far as implementing their plans it is because they are too busy rolling them. These problems have prompted some specialists to argue that medium- and long-term plans are wasteful and frustrating for the poorer developing countries, and that an annual plan or budget makes more sense (v. Caiden & Wildavsky 1974; Leys 1972). Waterston has advocated an 'annual-cum-sectoral programming approach to planning' (1972: 94), but acknowledges that while this gives greater immediacy the sense of direction given by longer plans is lost. Certainly, the 'success' of a fiveyear plan may be seen in its capacity to control the annual budgets (Lewis 1966: 260); but the budget is mainly concerned with short-term financial matters, and has little to say about major issues of social, economic and political development. Its effects tend to be piecemeal, and it cannot easily incorporate grand schemes for change. While the schedules of planning do not accord smoothly with the rhythms of social and economic life, they may also not fit the political timetables of the state. Eric Williams, a practical politician from Trinidad, has remarked that 'To have medium term plans coinciding with the term of office of a government is almost certainly bound to "overpoliticise" the process of national economic and social planning. Under these circumstances it is almost inevitable that planning will become the sport of party politics. Wild promises rather than realistic goals will be set 114

Sectors and regions out in the Plan . . .' (1972: 41). It has been pointed out that medium-term planning would fit very badly into the political calendar of the USA, where presidential, national and state elections are held every four years. In electoral democracies like Britain the continuity of planning is broken up by changes of government and strategic shifts of policy (Bowles & Whynes 1979: 187); even where these bring no major changes the regular lulls in government activity caused by the electoral cycle interfere with even the routine aspects of planning (Mayer et al. 1974: 97). The very different political organisation of the state socialist countries is expressed in the confidence with which they are able to plan over periods as long as twenty years. It has often been noted that the poor developing countries do not inhabit a world in which long-range projections of their own futures have much value: Uncertainty and anxiety about the future in a new nation are not the creation of individual or collective fantasy; they are based on an accurate estimate of reality. The businessman adapts to this situation by maintaining high liquidity and investing largely in commercial transactions with a rapid turnover . . . Long term strategies require a measure of environmental stability that is absent in most new nations. (Scott 1968: 248) However, states are not businessmen, even though small entrepot countries which do not plan, like Hong Kong, may give that impression. They do not even resemble large business enterprises, although some would like to think of them in these terms. States do not plan simply to maximise short-term material benefits or to please an annual meeting of shareholders. As the recent experiences of a number of countries make painfully clear, a state cannot go into voluntary liquidation when disaster strikes. States (and their plans) are not concerned exclusively with economic affairs; their scale and complexity obliges them to inhabit a period of time much grander than that occupied by lesser organisations or by individual people. Accordingly, they have an interest in the future which is more far-reaching; during the twentieth century this interest has been expressed most notably in two competitive activities, the one destructive and the other more evidently constructive: warfare and national planning. We might have little difficulty in agreeing that the former is a process which should justly fail as a strategy for development, but the persistent failure of planning as a means of assuring our collective progress is much more disheartening. Planning economies: sectors and regions

The mass of activities, enterprises and projects which are the basic ingredients of planned development cannot all be treated in detail in the 115

Structures and processes National Plan. A concise plan is obliged to group decisions about investment, savings and consumption in the national economy into broader categories which serve as a bridge between the general policies of the government and the detailed fabric of each project. The two sorts of mediating category most generally used are sectors and regions. Regions are geographical units and, although the criteria which define them are arbitrary and very variable, they have the advantage of being identified by spatial boundaries. Sectors usually lack this visibility: they are diffuse sub-divisions of the economy, specifying types of activity like 'commerce' or 'education'. All plans are structured both regionally and sectorally, but in the plans of socialist states productive enterprises tend to be grouped by regions, whereas sectors form the main sub-categories in the mixed economies. Ontologically, there can be few weaker categories in the vocabulary of planning than sector; it is an appropriate comment on its intellectual status that it is defined in none of the four dictionaries of economics at the disposal of this author, although, in the organisation of the mixed economies, few categories play a more prominent role. However useful 'sectors' may be in coming to terms with a national economy and drawing up broad programmes for investment, it is important to understand that they are empirical, not theoretical categories: they are arbitrarily defined chunks of this or that economy, managerial devices. Their use as comparative analytical categories can only be an imposture: the 'agricultural sector' in Bangladesh and Iran is 'the same' only in trivial ways, not simply because farming in these two countries is very different, but because the economies from which this sector has been excised are quite dissimilar. The fact that sectors cannot be defined with sufficient clarity nor manipulated with sufficient precision goes some way to explaining the troublesome discontinuity between intention and achievement in planning. It is in part a product of the dichotomy between 'macro-' and 'microeconomies', and the lack of consistent analytical relationships between these two domains. By pragmatic usage, 'sector' has acquired a stature which falsely presumes some theoretical understanding of its meaning, but the fact that it has no clear theoretical basis has allowed it to be used freely in the planning vocabulary of the USA and the USSR, of Kenya and China. A prime virtue of the notion of 'sector' is, apparently, its presumption of integration, precision and control: this derives from the geometrical analogy in which it may be assumed that two sectors lie within the same circle, but are subtended by different arcs. Two economic sectors, for example industry and education, are thus presumed to have a coherent relationship with each other and, if the whole economy is 'sectored', all sub-divisions are presumed to have a mutually exclusive, systematic relationship to each other. From this, it is an easy step to pre116

Sectors and regions sume that a sector in any other economy which bears the same label is inherently the same thing. It should be clear that all this is part of the symbolism of planning, part of the conditions which it hopes to fulfil, rather than an accurate description of reality or a logically consistent theory. In the plans of the mixed economies, sectoral labels are familiar and repetitive: agriculture, industry, transport and communications, power, social services, etc. Very often they reflect the ministerial organisation of government, thus indicating responsibility for implementation. It is very unlikely that the sectoral breakdown of any two national plans will be precisely similar - for the good reason that no two economies are precisely similar: even in the same country, sectors change from plan to plan because economic activities change and have to be reorganised. An illustration of this appears in the chapter on Malaysia (Figure 5.5). Inevitably, more sectors are 'discovered' as a country gains more experience with planning: In most less developed countries at the start of their development, it is easy to identify the critical sectors and the highest priority projects in those sectors, and to co-ordinate them in a public investment program produced pragmatically in five or six months. In these countries, agriculture, transportation and power are generally the most important economic sectors. In countries where water is scarce, irrigation is also important. . . (Waterston 1965: 90)

The phenomena characterised as 'sectors' are highly diverse, and the number identified in different countries very variable: Norway's National Budget Model in the early 1960s identified 129 sectors, while at the same time Iran construed its economy in terms of only three - oil, manufacturing and agriculture (Tinbergen 1964: 122-7). Sectors also have different degrees of inclusiveness: one of the most common 'macro-sectoral' distinctions is between the Primary (agriculture, mining, etc.), Secondary (manufacturing), and Tertiary (services, trade etc.). In a mixed economy, the plan will establish a major division between the 'public' and 'private' sectors, and then a range of cross-cutting categories like agriculture, transport and health. A major sector like industry may be subdivided further into light and heavy manufacturing, power, transport, etc. The scope for overlapping and ambiguous distinctions is considerable, particularly when a list of sectors very plainly bears no systematic and mutually exclusive relationships. It is not easy, for example, to comprehend the dichotomy of 'productive' and 'social' sectors applied by the World Bank to Malaya (IBRD 1955), or even the distinction between 'co-operative', 'public' and 'private' applied to the economy of Guyana (Guyana NSPC 1975: 24). In the 1950s and 1960s, broad dualistic distinctions were very fashionable - 'traditional' and 'modern', or 'agricultural' and 'industrial'. Michael Lipton later revived this in his contrast between 'rural' and 'urban', to explain 'Why poor people stay poor' (1977). It 117

Structures and processes seems that planners, in their efforts to come to technical grips with the economy, have even sectoralised themselves: this is most noticeable in the contrast which is sometimes made between 'economic' and 'social' sectors. When planners have carved up as much of the economy as they can into more or less discrete sectors, there is the problem of identifying the residuum: this usually acquires some variant of the label 'social', and consists of a rag-bag of public services, community development projects, the public administration, and so on. An interesting by-product of the enthusiasm for economic sectors was the discovery in the 1970s of something called 'the informal sector', a range of shady activities which had hitherto evaded formal economic analysis and the eyes of officialdom, but played a vital part in the functioning of an economy like Kenya's (IBRD 1975: xiii; 388ff.).

Whereas a particular state may chop up its economy into a distinctive array of sectors for its own pragmatic purposes, the tendency for international organisations to do likewise in global terms is much more questionable. The 1972 Report of the World Bank's International operations is organised into ten major 'sectors of activity': agriculture, industry, transportation, telecommunications, electric power, water supply and sewerage, education, population planning, tourism and urbanisation. Some of these reflect the activities of World Bank departments; others look to particular needs in the developing countries; the last is simply a chapter-heading, an opportunity to consider things which at the time seemed important but were not dealt with elsewhere. These 'sectors' certainly do not describe the constituents of a particular national economy. They describe interests and investment priorities of the World Bank, but the similitude is potentially misleading. Countries which need to please the World Bank may be encouraged to spurious imitation. The diversity of these lists raises the question: why these categorisations rather than some other - distinguishing among social classes, for example? The same labels which appear in the mixed economies recur in the state socialist economies. For example, the State Planning Commission in China solicits from each of the twenty-one Provinces, five Autonomous Regions (e.g. Tibet) and three Municipalities (e.g. Peking), planning proposals under the following sectoral headings: industrial production, agricultural production, main capital construction projects, raw materials and supplies, finance, transport and communications, commerce, wages and manpower, and social services (R. Berger 1979: 183). It is also notable that sectors have become the key device by which planning links are established among CMEA countries: member-states agree bilaterally on matching sectors which they propose to link in production and trade (Plaksin n.d.: 47-8). Once it has become routinised in the procedures and vocabulary of 118

Sectors and regions planning, a sector may acquire an appearance of permanence and solidity. Its 'reality' is a pattern of activities, regulations, projects and enterprises, both existing and anticipated. Where they are associated with durable organisations like ministries or para-statal agencies, sectors can become politically competitive, officials competing strenuously against one another for resources to invest in 'their' sector. This has happened in countries as different as Malaysia and the USSR (Nove 1969: 83). Another axis of conflict may be between 'sectoral' sub-units of a central planning agency and planning units in the ministries which are responsible for implementing and helping to devise 'sectoral programmes'. The main economic technique which is applied to sectors is inputoutput analysis, an aggregate assessment of investments in terms of the goods and services which are produced. A major problem for national planners is trying to ensure that the criteria for investment decisions in different sectors are roughly consistent. How, for example, can one choose fairly between a housing scheme, a new technical college and an electricity-generating project, when national resources are scarce? Although careful calculation can assist this decision, much will depend on policy - how the government chooses to define welfare. Such policy will already be evident in the way sectors have been demarcated as a framework for public spending. One reason for the popularity of 'package' projects - the clustering in a locality of investments which technically fall within different sectors - is that the interrelationships among their costs and benefits can be perceived more clearly: for example, an electrification scheme, a fertiliser factory and an agricultural development project can be tied together in mutually beneficial ways. This, in fact, is the basis of regional planning. In many respects, regional planning looks like national planning on a reduced scale and rather than solving the problems of sectoral planning it may proliferate and intensify them. The federal structure of a country like Nigeria may oblige the state to plan regionally, although in countries like India and Malaysia the central planning agency has contrived to keep the upper hand. For practical purposes, regions can be as hard to specify as sectors: What constitutes an economic or functional region is a much debated subject. In the socialized countries, the limits of an economic region are largely determined by specialized production of an area. In the mixed economies, definitions of economic regions, although varied, give greater stress to the role of trade and services of an area. (Waterston 1965: 554n) The main reason why a country may opt to plan regionally is to take advantage of an existing distribution of resources - the availability of mineral deposits, agricultural land, labour and so on. However, the state 119

Structures and processes may also intervene to reduce geographical disparities in wealth, income and patterns of investment which have developed over time. The differences between the more developed coastal regions of the West African countries and the poorer savannah hinterland are an example. The direction of resources from one major region to another may imply a 'sectoral' shift - from industry to agriculture, or from one kind of agriculture to another. The political motives for such a policy are articulated in many ways, such as the 'class-like' distinctions which have developed over time between one ethnic group and another, or between areas in which cash cropping is well established and those which have become impoverished exporters of wage labour (v. Amin 1974). It will be clear that political decisions to correct these imbalances will have a profound effect on the calculation of the costs and benefits of particular development projects: they may be seductively 'cheap' in areas which are already well endowed, and prohibitively expensive in marginal areas whose 'development problem' is the lack of resources to invest. It is well known that many of these problems arise from the construction of colonial boundaries, and their remarkable persistence within the rubric of the new, post-colonial states. Regional planning is made more complex by the 'economic artificiality' of political and administrative units (Niculescu 1958: 40) and the need to carve out new zones for 'comprehensive' planning which, like the famous Tennessee Valley Authority, have to be chartered by the state to override local political authorities. The planning of regions and sectors does not seem to have received the intellectual attention it deserves. It has become fashionable to devote much more scrupulous attention to the 'bricks and mortar' of development, specific projects and enterprises. However, it is clear that efficient mediating categories are still required to link these to national policies and plans. In its critical appraisal of Kenya, the World Bank mission insisted that the priority for future improvement in planning is at the sector level, and that the main concentration of this increased effort should be on all phases of microeconomic planning and development management in directly productive sectors . . . But sector plans must be practical programs of action, not merely statements of philosophy, and very often sector policy will emerge out of the attempt to identify more projects and programs. (IBRD 1975: 388) Planning resources: development projects

In projects, development plans have, at length, to be turned into actions. At this level the practicality of policy is put to the test. The same project may be defined in different ways by those designing, selecting, administering, assessing and participating in it. It is perhaps 120

Development projects most helpful to regard it as a managerial unit (IBRD 1975: 389n), a new development enterprise in which a set of activities is controlled by a single administrative authority. There is a sense in which each participant engineer, labourer, farmer, settler - and what is expected of him day by day are known, scheduled and quantified. In this section we shall consider how projects are devised, evaluated and made consistent with national plans; patterns of project management and the modes of social organisation which are used habitually are discussed in Chapter 3. Planned development begins and ends with projects: projects on the drawing-board, and projects which are being implemented. This, at any rate, is the view of many development planners. Projects are the essential 'active ingredients' of plans, and they are the tangible evidence of plans in operation: The shortage of good, well-prepared projects which is a well-nigh universal feature of the planning experience of less developed countries is now widely recognized as a major impediment to the execution of plans for development' (Waterston 1965: 7). Although they do not concern us here, technical surveys of physical resources and the development opportunities they suggest are of fundamental importance. The problems of what is sometimes described as 'physical planning' (civil engineering, forest conservation, building design, etc.), and its achievements in coming to grips with apparently intractable environments, should not be underrated; but where physical planning ends the real problems of organising people begin. The basic work involved in preparing a project - pedological, architectural, agronomic - is immense, and for every project embarked upon, many others have been rejected, or 'shelved' for possible future use. The number of projects national planners consider in any year varies widely. In the 1960s, Tinbergen found that about 500 were dealt with in France, 160 in Ecuador, six in Norway and two in Iran (1964: 129). According to Lewis, 'The making of the Plan should begin simultaneously at its two ends; at the individual project level, and at the macroeconomic level. Then the results of these two are adjusted to one another' (1966: 147). This to-ing and fro-ing is typical of national planning everywhere, appearing for example in the 'Two Initiatives' (or the 'Two Ups and Two Downs') in Chinese planning: the normative pattern here is to take the ideas of the masses, concentrate and systematise them, explain these reformulations 'until the masses embrace them as their own', translate them into real activities, learn from the practical experience and from the reactions of the masses, and so on (R. Berger 1979: 182-6). This is comparable to the 'Project Cycle' envisaged by the World Bank: a development opportunity is identified (usually after technical studies) and a project outlined', this is referred to existing macro- or sectoral plans and then the project is designed in detail. This is once again returned to 121

Structures and processes prior authority where it is appraised and a decision made on whether to implement; when it is under way the project is evaluated, and on the strength of this new projects may be identified or the existing formula replicated (v. IBRD 1975: 389ff.). The difference between this sort of process and the 'one-off public or private project should be evident; the purpose of national planning is to view projects as an ensemble, and ensure that they are designed, appraised and evaluated with reference to one another. There are numerous examples of incompatibility, if not of outright contradiction, among the projects assembled in particular development plans. This seems to happen most frequently where a number of different external aid agencies design and manage projects. Lesotho's Third FiveYear Plan (1980-5) recognises that the Cooperative Crop Production Programme, involving capital-intensive sharecropping between government agencies and small landholders, was quite incompatible with a Basic Agricultural Services Programme, which was pursuing the development of independent smallholders countrywide (Kingdom of Lesotho 1981a: 166). Economists have devoted much time and attention to how consistency might be achieved: It is clearly desirable that all projects should be evaluated, so far as possible, by applying the same principles. Otherwise inconsistent decisions are certain to be made . . . planning harmony should not be too difficult to achieve in the case of a corporation whose sole aim is to maximize its profits . . . harmony is much more difficult to achieve when one is trying to plan to maximum social advantage for a whole country. (Little & Mirrlees 1974: 5-6) Projects, and their relationships to national interests, are appraised by various versions of cost-benefit analysis. The intention is to proceed from a weighing-up of the economic inputs and outputs which may be derived from each project, to a broader assessment of the gains and losses to the economy and society at large if the project is to be undertaken. Investing large sums of money in a costly irrigation project in one area may have to be justified to the taxpayers in other areas who have helped, through the state, to fund it: the project may become a useful source of national revenue, or provide cheaper agricultural produce to city-dwellers. The material costs of a project are usually much easier to assess than its benefits, which may accrue too far in the future to be reckoned with any accuracy. Since the benefits have to be taken very largely on trust, there is an evident need for some rational and consistent means for predicting outcomes, and for choosing among alternative project designs. In the immediate post-war years, the costs and benefits of each project were usually reckoned in terms of current market prices in much the same way as they would be in a business firm. Net output was judged in terms of the contribution it made to national growth. By the mid-1960s it had become 122

Development projects evident that this piecemeal approach provided an inadequate basis for discriminating between projects, and assessing their relationships to each other within a national development plan. Little and Mirrlees, who devised (originally for the OECD) a very influential set of techniques for social cost-benefit analysis, point out that their approach 'does not accept that actual receipts adequately measure social benefits, and actual expenditures social costs' in a development project: 'But it does accept that actual receipts and expenditures can be suitably adjusted so that the difference between them, which is therefore very closely analogous to ordinary profit, will properly reflect the social gain' (1974: 19). Social cost-benefit analysis looks for means of 'adjusting' the prices affecting a project so that they will give a more realistic account both of the profitability of the project itself and of the contributions it makes to the economy at large. One of the main intentions of the approach is to help eliminate projects which, in terms of market prices, look promising but may ultimately become a burden to the economy; it may also be used to justify projects which seem expensive but which will offer wider benefits in the longer term. The technique is not concerned to find a substitute for imperfect markets, but to improve on them by adjusting prices so that they are both 'more realistic' and more beneficial to 'society at large'. However, it should be obvious that some kind of cost-benefit analysis is essential to the evaluation of any project in any country; adjusted 'accounting' prices are as necessary, and in their own way as problematic, in evaluating enterprises in the socialist economies. In all cases, a basic problem is how the interests of 'society at large' should be defined and computed. Here, anthropologists and sociologists should be particularly wary of the word 'social' as it is applied to cost-benefit analysis. In the language of 'neo-classical' economics, social costs and benefits are 'externalities' and, as the word suggests, fall very largely outside the scope of precise economic measurement. They are gains and losses which are incidental to immediate interests and calculations of an individual or firm embarking on an enterprise; they accrue to the public rather than to the firm or the private investor. An example would be the 'costs' of air pollution borne by people living in the vicinity of a large factory, and the 'benefits' which its workforce may bring to local shopkeepers. It could be said that economists are continually seeking to bring more and more 'externalities' within the bounds of economic computation; this, on the grand scale, is the problem posed by designing and appraising development projects. Their 'internal' characteristics are certainly important, but what are their 'external' effects? These are particularly important because, unlike the private individual or firm, investment costs are usually borne not only by the people involved in the project but by the 123

Structures and processes state, which raises revenue from other citizens or by borrowing or soliciting aid. These considerations, raised by the emergence of national planning during the last forty years, have taxed severely the techniques at the disposal of economists; social cost-benefit analysis is concerned with the complex problems of public investment, and one of its functions is to make projects planned by the state comparable with those devised by private enterprise, and thus to exercise some control over both 'sectors' (Waterstonl965:323n). Much of the criticism of project appraisal techniques has turned on the view that the welfare of something so complex and amorphous as 'society' cannot be reduced to simple, aggregated, quantitative indices (see Kornai 1979; Hirschman 1967). Even the most elaborate arithmetic is likely to produce values which are the unsatisfactory lowest common denominators of highly variable interests and what particular individuals and groups actually want. Efforts have been made to accommodate this by ascribing different economic weights to particular income groups, and thereby to make planning more equitable, but these are still at the experimental stage (Duloy 1974: 206). As Bell has remarked, setting welfare functions for a country is ultimately a matter for political judgment rather than econometric technique, and unfortunately the political process in most developing countries cannot be depended upon to generate such indicators: 'Where this is so, there will tend to be a good deal of latitude for policy analysts and administrators involved in the planning process to impress their own particular values on the shape and direction of policy' (1974: 69). From the above it might appear that all development projects are submitted to detailed economic scrutiny: some are, others very clearly are not. As Duloy points out, to appraise in any detail all of the 2,800 villagelevel projects in the Indonesian public works programme in 1972 would have been quite impossible (1974: 207). While careful study of individual projects invariably reveals their complexity and the need for continuous adjustment in matters of detail, the search has always been for short-cuts, and schemes which can be more easily, quickly and cheaply replicated. Planners know that each project is unique and complex; but they are also aware that planning operations themselves must be made more costeffective. 'It is a cliche among planners and [aid] donors that the planning work going into a one-million-dollar project is very similar in extent and difficulty to that of a twenty-million-dollar project' (IBRD 1975: 398). In their mission to Kenya, the World Bank pointed out that larger and faster projects did not necessarily mean capital intensive projects but 'programs of low unit cost which are large mainly because they are designed to benefit a large number of people' (op. cit.: 398n). The advantages of 'package' projects rest mainly in their replicability and in the way they 124

Development projects assemble basic ingredients - a new crop, cooperative marketing, mechanisation - to provide scale economies (v. Griffin & Enos 1970: 115). It is argued that, if it is re-used again and again, 'the plan for a very small project can economically be given the same attention that would be given a project equal in size to the sum of the many replications of the small project' (IBRD 1975: 400). The numbers of planning and administrative personnel can also be reduced and - a great attraction for foreign aid donors - wider policy decisions can be subsumed conveniently within the rubric of project design: The mission has found much support, both in the planning organization and in the external aid community, for very broadly defined projects which aim to affect a great number of people and to concentrate decisions about sectoral and subsectoral alternatives within a given project preparation, (op. cit.: 400n) An important feature of the replicable project is that it must allow scope for local adaptation: it must in certain respects be less detailed than a 'custom-built' project, and pay more attention to 'external' features like road networks, fertiliser distribution and the development of agricultural extension services. The Kenyan Special Rural Development Programme is an example of this: The central ideas of this approach are (a) to select one or two key services which can make a noticeable impact on production of an important crop; (b) to design a plan for the use of one of these one or two services; (c) to design a mechanism and an optimal management unit for delivering them; and (d) to replicate the management unit as fast as possible . . . The minimum package approach is to settle for some second best combination which will nonetheless be effective, and spread this second best alternative as broadly as possible. (IBRD 1975: 413) Economic planners do not need the counsel of sociologists and anthropologists to know that projects frequently founder in a mass of unforeseen and obstructive 'social factors'. In arguing 'the centrality of side-effects', Hirschman pointed out these hazards for project appraisal long ago (1967: 160ff.). While they may be aware of the awful 'shifting proteanlike mass' of the 'non-technical' aspects of projects (Niculescu 1958: 36), some planners still seek refuge in 'the centrality of technical effects'. Until quite recently, this was often coupled with a 'cruel-to-be-kind' approach predicated on the functionalist belief that if certain technical changes were forced on people, their tiresome social habits would be obliged to adapt. A visiting anthropologist could be expected to rise to the bait of remarks about making omelettes and breaking eggs, but too often people have failed to respond to a technical innovation with the degree of enthusiasm which fulfils planning targets. An agronomist who has laboured to establish a lucrative cotton scheme in a semi-desert area may justifiably feel offended by the reluctance of the pastoral nomads for 125

Structures and processes whom it was all designed to settle down, wield a hoe, and reap the benefits. He might not even be convinced by an anthropologist's efforts to explain this ungrateful behaviour in terms of the relative benefits of the nomadic way of life (v. Flood 1975). Some of the technical terms applied to development projects very clearly lack analytical precision, although much may be expected of them. Various 'multiplier effects' which are reckoned to arise from a particular investment are an example: the construction of a factory or a road may stimulate private enterprise in the vicinity, strengthening and complementing the project. Again, concentration of investment in one area or in a particular social group may have a 'trickle-down effect', the benefits percolating out to less privileged groups and localities by various informal, unplanned processes. Unfortunately, these articles of faith have proved too fallible to be used in any consistent way as justifications for undertaking projects. Economists may rightly complain that sociologists have done too little to help circumscribe the 'social factors' in planning. However, the language of development planning is still essentially the language of economics, and development of the social services still has to be justified in terms of explicit costs and benefits. Many economists themselves do not have great confidence in the capacity of technical categories to organise social welfare, and few can seriously believe that they can lay hold on that ultimate 'externality', human happiness, and build it unerringly into plans and projects. For most the key word is 'maximise' make the most efficient use of the most efficient ideas. It is now widely recognised that other political and social processes ought to be specifying welfare and establishing planning criteria, but politicians have proved inept, and other social and political scientists have been unable, or unwilling, to specify practicable alternative approaches. While anthropologists and others take 'economic development' very much for granted, assuming that that is what 'planning' is all about, 'social development' remains a very opaque and uncomfortable notion - 'political development' even more so. Raymond Apthorpe has examined the meanings ascribed to 'social planning' and found them multifarious: they include community development, social work, health, education, family planning, the organisation of 'social defence' for slum dwellers, and many other things loosely associated with 'the human factor' in development (1970:10-17). 'Social planning' is either an amorphous residuum of 'economic planning' or a dimension of it which cannot be distinguished with any clarity. Waterston notes that Some countries, including Burma, Honduras and Turkey, have considered it necessary to set up social planning units apart from economic planning units as a way of emphasizing the importance of social programs. But the distinction 126

Development projects between social and economic planning is an artificial one and it is usually difficult to distinguish between the two. (Waterston 1965: 537) When they collaborate in the design and appraisal of projects, economists and anthropologists frequently find themselves talking at cross-purposes about the meaning of 'social' costs and benefits. Economic planners regard projects as essentially quantitative exercises, but anthropologists take a very different view, seeing them as complex and specific configurations of actors and activities, and judging the success of project design in terms of the thoroughness with which these qualitative details are understood. Because project appraisal techniques are fundamentally economic and not anthropological techniques, there is not much scope for the qualitative information the anthropologists may wish to adduce. His suggestions will quickly be translated into financial costs - and only rarely into 'useful' financial benefits: he is likely to argue for the slower phasingin of a project to allow time for people to adjust, to press for more elaborate public relations to persuade rather than coerce, to recommend a stronger agricultural extension programme or more expenditure on 'social' facilities like schools, clinics and day-nurseries. Anthropologists are expensive, repeatedly asking for more time and money now against vague promises of fewer obstacles or happier communities in the future. We shall consider in greater detail in Chapter 6 the various roles anthropologists have played, or might play, in development planning, but one of these roles warrants comment now. Sometimes anthropologists are engaged in project design and appraisal as a substitute for political process, soliciting the views of 'the people' and representing them in terms more or less intelligible to the planners, while at the same time representing to 'the people' the intentions of the planners. Some anthropologists commit themselves to this role because of their feelings of partisanship for people who might otherwise fall victim to the predations of wicked planners, or because they feel they can mediate constructively between local needs and national development efforts. In any event, the role of vox populi is fraught with hazards, many of which lie not in a particular project and locality or in the competence of the anthropologist himself, but in the wider planning process as we have sought to expound it here. While many anthropologists have been wary of accepting such roles, others have tried very conscientiously to speak to planners in their own terms. This proceeds from a sensible understanding of the fact that pedological, botanical, architectural and economic factors all have to be convened within the design of the project, and that if 'social factors' are to be taken into account at all they must be presented in terms which are intelligible to the technicians, and in terms which are sympathetic rather than antagonistic to their intentions. The quantitative techniques of 127

Structures and processes sociology - conspicuously sample surveys and attitude testing - have proved particularly useful, meeting technical and econometric data with authoritative-looking social statistics. Some sociologists have sought to devise project design and appraisal techniques of their own, usually intent on gauging the 'impact' or 'social soundness' of a set of technical proposals on a particular community or region. The principal disadvantage of such approaches is that they are very evidently not cost-effective, at least within the timespans in which projects are designed and managed, and propose to complicate a process which others are trying to simplify and speed up. The greatest problem remains the intellectual and moral one of attempting to reduce social and political processes to technical terms, a task which some anthropologists continue to approach with alarming naivety (see, for example, Everts 1980). Planners and the public It has gradually become obvious that, in order to make a reality of our policies of socialism and self-reliance, the planning and control of development in this country must be exercised at local level to a much greater extent than at present. Our nation is too large for the people at the centre in Dar es Salaam always to understand local problems or to sense their urgency. When all power remains at the centre, therefore, local problems can remain, and fester, while local people who are aware of them are prevented from using their initiative in finding solutions. (Nyerere 1973: 344, on decentralisation of planning and administration in Tanzania) While all political authorities demand compliance from their subject populations, national planning in the twentieth century has made a particular issue of public participation. The state has taken the initiative to improve economic and social welfare, and the public at large are invited to cooperate for their own good and - the crux of the matter - for some more generalised, and less immediately evident, public good. For very many people in the developing countries of the world this is a novel experience, and their compliance depends not simply on their comprehension of a development project in which they may be asked to participate, but on their capacity to entrust their future welfare to the judgment of outsiders, and on some profound respect for the power of the state to which they owe allegiance. Reflecting on the Tennessee Valley Authority, Selznick remarked that planning measures 'center about attempts to organize the mass, to change an undifferentiated and unreliable citizenry into a structured, readily accessible public'. Then, as if uncomfortably aware of the statist implications of this, he added: 'accessibility for administrative control seems to lead rather easily to control for . . . other purposes' (1949: 219-20). 128

Planners and the public Undoubtedly he had in mind the experience of the socialist states in which the Plan is 'the overwhelmingly significant criterion for managerial activity below the topmost level' (Nove 1969: 77-8), and where centralised control of processes of production leaves, to the liberal mind, little room for individual choice. The assumption of public compliance is largely tacit, and it is the function of the party to 'prod' the populace in matters of targets and schedules (op. cit.: 77). By contrast, the 'indicative' plans of the mixed economies are much more an act of faith in public compliance, yet their success depends very closely on how much de facto control the state can exert. While there is a tendency in 'soft' states for costly projects to degenerate, 'hard' states seem able to secure public participation only at the cost of the kind of voluntarism which liberal democracies ostensibly cherish. The more earnestly it undertakes the task of planned development, the more the state tends to close-off the opportunities available to private individuals and groups in civil society to take the initiative for social and economic change. This dilemma is most conspicuous in the development of state enterprises in the mixed economies. Macro-economic controls over money and markets are much less effective, in central planning, than controls which extend to processes of production. It is very evidently more efficient to put production units under professional management responsible to the state, and to engage labour directly, rather than to entrust government investment in various ways to private initiative. The choice between an agricultural development scheme based on smallholder settlement, with its slow and uncertain rate of return, and an estate system based on wage labour, is difficult for a regime seeking rapid returns on investment while trying to sustain liberal aspirations. As we shall see more clearly when we examine the case of the Federal Land Development Authority in Malaysia (Chapter 5), where planned development is strong there is a marked tendency for participatory projects to evolve into state enterprises with pronounced distinctions between managerial and labouring classes. The parallels with enterprises in the socialist states are inescapable, and have been an object of concern to aid donors in the capitalist countries. By the late 1960s efforts, sometimes draconian, to oblige people to implement plans were regarded with distaste as crudely undemocratic. This would no doubt be echoed in the socialist states, although a much closer equation of popular will and central control is presumed. Memories of Stalin linger on as a reminder of the social costs of planned development: 'How does one disentangle Stalin's excesses and crudities from the general policies and achievements of the party? It may well seem safest not to try' (Nove 1969: 73). For Third World leaders who have contemplated just how 'total' development efforts ought to be, Russian experience offers, at best, an equivocal answer. Economic 129

Structures and processes growth at the cost of popular discontent is not an efficient path to development. From the late 1960s, populist appeals for a closer bond between state and people in the cause of development have been voiced in plans and manifestoes, in development literature and in international arenas. To implement a plan, the people must be persuaded to expand, to move from a posture of defence to offence, from inactivity to purposeful activity. The only way this can be done is by bringing the people into the confidence of the government, soliciting information about their needs, and ensuring that the benefits of the plan are equitably distributed. All economic interests in the nation must be represented . . . (Griffin & Enos 1970: 193)

A decade later, the populist tone was even more insistent: 'people who are to be affected directly by such projects should participate to a much fuller extent in the planning and decision-making processes which ultimately affect them' (Briggs 1980: 111). As any devout liberal knows, such sentiments have to be taken with a pinch of salt: too much public participation is incompatible with efficient government, and is certainly incompatible with coherent national planning. Nevertheless, public enthusiasm for planned development seems to be inversely related to the strength of state control. At the moment, it seems that the only way states have been able to strike a balance between national planning and public involvement is by bureaucratic sprawl. Allowing a highly differentiated public to get involved in the design and management of projects requires more rather than less control, uniform decision-making bodies, and a strong administrative hierarchy. This has produced some confusion in development usage between the technical and the political meanings of 'devolution', for example in the expression 'planning from the bottom up': This phrase has two different meanings. In one it refers to building a plan out of properly prepared projects, as opposed to inventing projects to fill a predetermined set of aggregate targets in the plan; in the other it refers to a specific form of mass participation, in which people at or near the 'grass roots' are invited to say what should or could be done within the broad objectives of the plan. The latter meaning may or may not involve sending up to the central planners projects worked out at the lowest level councils. (Leys 1969: 272n)

It is clear that neither of these interpretations allocates effective control over planning to the local people, whose lives are to be changed. One of the most common ways in which planned development is 'devolved' from the state is through the (in varying degrees) Autonomous Authority or Agency, of which the Tennessee Valley Authority is the main paradigm. The intention is to assign to the Agency sufficient political capacity to perform an 'integrated' or 'comprehensive' range of tasks, 130

Planners and the public unfettered by the controls which would normally affect regional or local government. Such an agency is 'an enclave protected by suitable safeguards against contamination by a hostile environment' and is 'designed to insulate the project from the country in general and from the rest of the public sector in particular' (Hirschman 1967: 154). As the TVA case made clear (Selznick 1949), devolution of control to the Agency does not necessarily enhance or even permit public involvement, nor does it insulate the project from the disruptive effects of local politics. The Autonomous Agency is a means of parcelling out state control, and as such may readily be taken over by a foreign aid agency, by private enterprise, or by dominant political interests in the area in which it operates. Very often the Autonomous (sometimes Tarastatal') Agency is obliged to establish its own administrative apparatus and to displace existing political structures. Azizul Huq, former director of the Comilla project in Bangladesh (see p. 44), remarked to this author that 'practically a new government was set up there'. The Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit (CADU) in Ethiopia, which was modelled on Comilla, is a well-documented example of the Autonomous Agency at work. In 1967 the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), in collaboration with the Imperial Ethiopian Government, effectively took over Chilalo district in Arussi Province with the intention of devising and in due course replicating elsewhere an elaborate and comprehensive rural development 'package'. At an early stage it was recognised that if this project was to have a chance of success it would have to be insulated from the semi-feudal hierarchy by which Ethiopia was governed. The state, in the form of the modernising apparatus around the Emperor Haile Selassie, sanctioned the experiment and participated in it: following the pattern in which the Comilla Academy took possession of the Thana (police district) around it, SID A took control of the awraja (district) of Chilalo, interrupting the conventional hierarchy of government. The intention was to provide the technical, economic and social means for developing the small farms in the district: impressive progress was made in the multiplication of high-yielding varieties of wheat and in improving livestock, and the new techniques were diffused through a network of agricultural extension services. At the beginning, a district Development Committee was set up to serve as a political backbone for the project. It included the Governors of the district and its component sub-districts, the mayor of the Provincial town Asella, local education, agricultural and land-reform officials, senior CADU managers, representatives of the major businessmen and landowners in the district and of the farmers in each Agricultural Extension Area established by CADU. This Committee 131

Structures and processes met only once on January 16,1969, to discuss an agenda covering an introduction to CADU, marketing, credit and cooperative programs, identification of model farmer activity, experimental land adjudication issues, rural sciences teaching, the Asella water system, and water and road development programs . . . The problem with the meeting was that its members varied considerably in terms of status and power, which under the values and norms of the traditional system inhibited from the beginning any real inter-change of ideas or cooperation. In the presence of such problems the meeting was static, neither side ever seeming to muster the effort to bring another meeting together. (Cohen 1974: 606-7) Instead, CADU established its own network of Extension Areas, marketing centres, cooperative societies etc.; however, to the intense frustration of the Swedes, their efforts to establish an efficient system for popular participation was quietly subverted by the existing 'feudal' hierarchy of landowners and tenants, which deflected the benefits of SID A investments away from the poorer farmers for whom they were intended. Improved cereals and livestock mysteriously appeared on the big farmers' land, encouraging them to displace tenants and buy out smallholders. It seemed that local politics was again triumphing over the imported structure; SID A, still a long way from a replicable 'Maximum Package Project' retaliated by securing the support of the new revolutionary government and extending its control to the entire Province (CADU is now the Arussi Agricultural Development Unit). It is clear that the much more local problems of political participation remain unsolved, and the economy has not been 'developed' in the equitable manner envisaged by the Swedes, but remains (even under the current 'revolutionary' regime in Ethiopia) in awkward transition from a species of feudalism to some kind of primitive capitalism. It seems that quite similar results have been achieved by the ACAR project in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil (v. Ribeiro & Wharton 1970). The Associacao de Credito e Assistencia Rural (ACAR) was set up in 1948 as an independent Authority 'with insulation from the political process' (op. cit.: 437), sponsored by the American International Association for Economic and Social Development (AIA - an early forerunner of US AID), and with the collaboration of the state government. The programme was intended to bring the benefits of 'supervised credit' and agricultural extension services to the small farmers in a state population of 9.8 millions (1960); it was administered by fourteen regional and 120 local offices, and a staff of 550. Public participation was limited to direct 'credit supervision' relationships with individual farmers, and to farmers' clubs, publicity rallies, etc. The state government had much more direct influence than was the case in CADU, and when American financial support was phased out (by 1960) ACAR operations were merged with local and national banking interests and with the apparatus of local government. 132

Planners and the public It is evident that patterns of 'devolution' in development planning have been different in the mixed economies and the major socialist economies. In the latter, the priority has been strong central control but over time the need to extend decision-making to the basic productive enterprises has become a necessity: There is a clearly noticeable tendency in socialized countries toward the decentralization of economic decision-making as their economies develop. This involves the creation or expansion of regional or local planning bodies and the gradual devolution of an increasing amount of authority to them. In Yugoslavia, since 1952, planning bodies in the republics, districts and, especially, the communes have taken over planning functions formerly exercised by the central agency. Since 1957, a similar trend has developed in the USSR, mainland China and, more recently, in most Eastern European countries. But in every socialized country, a central planning agency continues to formulate the national development plan which planning bodies in the regions, localities and enterprises use as the main guide in preparing their own plans. (Waterston 1965: 371)

In the USSR, greater public participation has been made possible not so much by relinquishing central control, as by using the mechanism of the party and by elaborating the administrative bureaucracy. The central planning agencies (GOSPLAN) in the Union and the Republics are linked to planning units in the Territorial Economic Councils (Sovnarkhozy), to local planning bodies in the towns and districts (variously OBPLAN, GORPLAN, and RAYPLAN), and thence to the individual productive enterprises (Waterston 1965: 540). The 'Mass Line' for planning in China, propounded by Mao as early as 1943, built upon a complex and long-established hierarchy of administration, but insisted that it should extend to the active involvement of every productive individual; the Two Ups and Two Downs' of planning described above have thus sought to incorporate the views of the working population at large in the process of planning. The complexity of this is illustrated by Berger in the case of Shensi Province (one of the twenty-one in China): it is divided into seven administrative regions and three cities, which are sub-divided into ninety-three counties and two county towns; these are again subdivided into 2,500 communes, which in turn consist of 30,000 production brigades, and ultimately 140,000 production teams, each consisting of between fifty and 250 workers (R. Berger 1979:183). Each September or October, the State Planning Commission sends an outline of requirements and objectives to the Provincial planning bodies, which pass them down towards the individual production teams. Targets and contributions are discussed in detail and amended proposals are sent back up the hierarchy, amalgamated and modified en route. The Regional Planning Commissions have the complicated task of reconciling suggestions from the 'line' with the broader pattern of distinctions among 'areas' - which include 'sectors' like agriculture, industry and commerce as well as geo133

Structures and processes graphical units. Further up the planning hierarchy, reconciling 'line' and 'area' has brought intense political struggles (op. cit.: 182-4): interests in the national economy, construed 'sectorally' do not coincide with the voice of the people as elicited by the 'Mass Line'. President Nyerere's efforts to establish something resembling the 'Mass Line' in Tanzania have been frustrated by the lack of a welldeveloped administrative hierarchy with some direct purchase on the basic units of production in the country's economy (v. Maro & Mlay 1979; Hyden 1980). Efforts at 'devolution' in the mixed economy of neighbouring Kenya have met with even less success; projects are still technical affairs designed by central government and expatriate officials, rather than political affairs in which local people have some say. In Kenya, as in so many other countries of Africa and Asia, planning was a response by the colonial administration to the 1940 and 1945 Colonial Development and Welfare Acts. During the war the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, sketched out a general plan and in 1945 a Development and ReconstrucFig. 2.1. Planning organisations in Kenya, c. 1967 (From Ghai 1972: 123) PRESIDENT CABINET

X

Council of Economic Ministers

_L

TREASURY

T

Substantive Ministries and Parastatal Bodies

Ministry of Economic Planning & Development

Computer Development I Section I Finance Section I

Planning Divisioa

Administrative & Technical Assistance Coordination

Planning Units

j

General Economic Statistics

I

Basic Services Natural Resources & Physical Planning

I Manpower Social Planning & Education

I

I Plan Implementation

L Agriculture 1 Section |

I Agriculture Land Settlement & Cooperatives

Provincial Planning Officers Provincial Development Committees Provincial Advisory Development Commit* District Development Committees District Advisory Development Committees

134

Statistics

Statistical Survey Unit

I Commerce Industry Tourism

Financial Analysis and Local Government

Planners and the public tion Authority (DARA) was set up to manage the first Ten-Year Plan. DARA, composed of colonial officials and advisers, lasted until 1952 when a new Planning Committee of the Executive Council was set up; development efforts thereafter were inhibited by the Mau Mau emergency (1952-9) and the political moves towards independence. Even after independence planning and project design remained in the hands of expatriates. There was very little scope for public involvement; the British had been unable to establish an effective local government hierarchy, depending much more on the contingent powers of political officers ('DCs'). Officials were very reluctant to allow plans and projects to become embroiled in party politics, both before independence and after. The organisation of the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, set up in 1964, ensured that planning remained highly centralised, and the preparation of projects an essentially technical exercise. At the heart of the Ministry was a powerful Planning Division (PD), whose Chief was also the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry. In 1968 it should have had eighteen permanent professional staff, but in fact only three senior and three junior posts had been filled by local personnel; the remaining departments of the PD were manned by expatriates - twenty-one altogether. At every level, public participation in planning was minimal: 'Unlike many other developing countries, Kenya does not have a system of working parties consisting of officials, businessmen, trade unionists and outside specialists involved in the formulation of the plan' (Ghai 1972: 126). An attempt to involve 'prominent citizens and outside specialists' in a National Social and Economic Development Advisory Council in 1964 was soon abandoned. To 'secure public participation' and to help 'facilitate and coordinate' development, the PD was served by Provincial and District Development Committees, consisting of 'the principal administrative and professional staff of the Central Government Ministries at the local level, such as agricultural, community development, veterinary, medical, education officers, and the chief administrative officer of the local authority' (op. cit.: 124). The District and Provincial Commissioners acted as Chairmen, but the key role was that of the Provincial Planning Officer, a professional who liaised directly with the PD. He was advised by special provincial planning teams, staffed by expatriates (Canadians and Norwegians), and it is significant that he and the Development Committees were responsible to the Plan Implementation department of the PD - an indication of the executive role they were expected to play. In an effort to 'democratise' the structure a little, Advisory Committees were set up in 1966 to assist the Provincial and District Development Committees; these consisted of coopted local politicians and 'eminent citizens' (op. cit.: 125). 135

Structures and processes The World Bank mission to Kenya, reporting in 1975, expressed the view that this 'devolved' structure had failed to generate useful projects and development ideas. However, it will be evident from Appendix B that efforts to secure public involvement in development planning have not met with very much greater success in the more advanced mixed economy of the UK. It is interesting that in Kenya the World Bank mission did not see the remedy in political reform and greater public involvement so much as in the improved technical capacity of 'the field staff of ministries' and a new Development Opportunity Team (DOT), a projectseeking mobile group based in Nairobi and staffed by expatriates (IBRD 1975: 401). Those who have the task of implementing projects (local managers, extension officers, etc.) are usually painfully aware of the relationship between effective planning and public enthusiasm, and know very well that people will not voluntarily change their lives if they have no clear understanding of the material and other advantages that a project will bring them. Planners, in the conventional division of labour in national development, are usually spared this public contact, and have less cause to dwell on the discrepancy between the rationality underlying a major hydro-electric scheme which will benefit the economy at large and the rationality of the peasants who must move to new and unknown lands to make way for the floodwater. For the planner there is little advantage in making the conflict of interest involved apolitical matter, and much to be gained - at least in the short term - from resolving it in technical terms. The services of sociologists and anthropologists have been solicited for this delicate task and the perils have already been noted. The techniques of social science are frequently deployed in the belief that 'public interest' in development can be summed and synthesised, and that consensus can be evaluated. Attitude surveys 'testing' the likely response to a proposed project are particularly problematic: if 70% of the sample like the project, will it be 70% successful? More elaborate 'indirect' testing of opinion may only make the figures harder to interpret. Too often there is an implicit utilitarian assumption behind the use of these techniques, that somehow the community has 'voted' for the project. The most cynical use of these figures may be in exculpation for the collapse of a project which the people evidently 'wanted'. There are many reasons why a technical appeal to 'the people' is unrealistic. To start with 'people' are not homogeneous, and even within quite small local communities their interests never amount to full 'consensus'. The economic and social differences among them mean that they will be differentially affected by a development project. More important, eliciting the views of the people tends to presuppose that they know about the project and its likely outcomes in much the same way and in much the 136

Planners and the public same detail as the project planners know about it. This can very rarely be the case: people do not have access to the information they would need to understand a project, nor do they have access to communications, nor even to the officials who prescribe choices for them. They rarely have an opportunity to assert what views they do have authoritatively; they are expected at best to compromise but not to overrule; they are certainly not expected to offer significant technical emendations. It is not simply the failure-rate of previous projects which leads planners to the view that 'the public' ought to play a greater role in the design of development projects, as well as their implementation. There may be a simple belief that if this awkward factor is incorporated at an earlier stage in planning, the process will be more efficient. But there is also a more vague, populist belief that ultimately 'the people' know what is best for them, and that this knowledge should be used to advise planning efforts. Again, anthropologists have been invited to reveal this esoteric knowledge, and have had understandable difficulty in doing so. Individual people may know rather well what is good for them, and what they can and can not do. 'The public' simply does not possess this kind of intellect. As a substitute, what anthropologists have offered is something quite different, part of their stock-in-trade which they call culture, a generalised view of the beliefs and values of 'a people' which should not be confused for political or economic interest. A more exacting liberal view is that 'the people' have both a right and an obligation to help shape public policy, and thus to help design projects which will affect them directly. Such a sentiment may excuse the utilitarian use of social survey techniques by sociologists and anthropologists, described above. Ultimately, all these efforts to defer to the public are predicated on various understandings of the meaning of democracy: 'we are all democrats today', John Dunn remarks, even if 'democratic reality is certainly pretty thin on the ground' (1979: 1,2). Since the Athenian paradigm which allowed at least a segment of the citizenry to make direct contributions to state decision-making, democracy has been transmuted into many different forms, representative and otherwise: 'But now it is the name for the good intentions of states or perhaps for the good intentions which their rulers would like us to believe they possess' (op. cit.: 12). It is an abstract moral standard: 'Democratic theory is the public cant of the modern world . . . All states today profess to be democracies because a democracy is what it is virtuous for a state to be' (op. cit.: 11). In both its capitalist and its socialist variants, democratic theory seeks to make the will of the people in some way compatible with efficient control by the state. National planning in the twentieth century has put democratic theories to the test in that it is originated by the machinery of the state but its outcomes are dependent on the will of individual people. It is therefore 137

Structures and processes easy to make the ideological assertion (heavily loaded with optimism about future outcomes) that successful development is indeed democracy at work.

138

Appendix D: Thirty-eight thousand development programmes

Paradoxically, much of the instrumental value of the conventional vocabulary of development planning rests in its /raprecision of meaning, and its authoritative, technical gloss. Advertising executives and businessmen are very familiar with these 'Buzzwords' - words which make a pleasant noise but have little explicit meaning. One property of these words is that they may be combined into almost infinite permutations and still 'mean' something. To illustrate this, we list below 56 words which occur frequently in the planner's lexicon. These will generate 38,316 development programmes; since the publisher is unaccountably reluctant to print the necessary 950 additional pages, we must prey on the reader's patience to elaborate it for him or herself. Select one word from each column at random to compose a four-word phrase: for example, A3, B6, C9, D12 = Systematically balanced cooperative action. Or A12, B9, C6, D3 = Comprehensively mobilised rural participation. These may be immediately recognisable, but what do they mean? If two or three people were each to write a paragraph explaining one of these phrases to the masses, on behalf of the government of Ruritania, their different interpretations should bear further witness to the malleability of such language. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

A

Centrally Rationally Systematically Formally Totally Strategically Dynamically Democratically Situationally Moderately Intensively Comprehensively Radically Optimally 139

B

Motivated Positive Structured Controlled Integrated Balanced Functional Programmed Mobilised Limited Phased Delegated Maximised Consistent

C

Grass-roots Sectoral Institutional Urban Organisational Rural Growth Development Cooperative On-going Technical Leadership Agrarian Planning

D

Involvement Incentive Participation Attack Process Package Dialogue Initiative Scheme Approach Project Action Collaboration Objective

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

3 Organisations

In this chapter we describe the institutional means by which the agents of the state seek to organise people and resources in the effort to put development plans into effect. Again, these show striking similarities worldwide: there are cooperatives and communes, councils and committees, organisations which serve as meeting places between development administrators and ordinary people. This encounter invokes a contrast between the apparatus of the state and the local organisation of diverse subject populations - stereotypically, the difference between bureaucracy and community. We explore this in some detail from an anthropological perspective, examining the ways in which officials see themselves and the communities they aspire to develop, and how local people view their own relationships with officialdom. A concluding section on education and communications further reveals the differences of interest and understanding which affect, often adversely, the translation of plans into concerted activity and social change.

Introduction

Although many indirect devices like taxation, import controls and subsidies are used by the state, planned development is ultimately an encounter between officials and subject peoples. In their 'attempts to organize the mass, to change an undifferentiated and unreliable citizenry into a structured, readily accessible public' (Selznick 1949: 219), planners have recourse to a range of institutions whose purpose is to secure and control public participation in development activities. In their innumerable manifestations throughout the world, these new organisations would appear to be very diverse; on closer inspection, the repertoire proves to be very small, a reflection of the recent history and institutional uniformity of national planning. Economic activities are organised in various types of cooperative society and commune, while committees and representative councils are standard devices for organising political activities. We shall explore the diverse functions and capacities of these institutions, but we shall argue that the most significant differences 140

Introduction among them are accounted for by the degree of state control which they embody. In planned development, the apparatus of the state reaches out and seeks to acquire a firmer purchase on the lives of ordinary people. This often brings about a collision of ideas, interests and institutions, which officials are inclined to interpret as the contrast between 'tradition' and 'modernity'. More substantively, the difficulties are usually explained in terms of two different and often incompatible styles of organisation: 'bureaucracy' and 'community'. This distinction looms large in the ideas and practices of development planning, and its complexities are explored in the first two sections of this chapter. Both community and bureaucracy are considered to be necessary ingredients of effective development organisation, but each is ambivalent, and their amalgamation is problematic. 'Community', for example, is seen as the raw material for change, but in another sense it is an idealised goal for development. In the real encounters between official and villager, the epistemological problems multiply: how each interprets the ideas, interests and activities of the other inevitably affects the outcomes of development efforts in profound ways. Projects, cooperatives, committees - these are arenas in which the complex encounters between state and people take place. The burden of seeking some accommodation among these various understandings and interests usually falls on the most junior officials in the bureaucratic hierarchy who work in most direct contact with the public; in this chapter we shall give them and their problems a good deal of sympathetic attention. If those nearer the political centre tend to underrate the difficulties of establishing development organisations it is because they tend to think of them as developmental means rather than as ends in themselves. For the experienced bureaucrat, forming a committee is a reflex response, a way of solving this problem or that. The presumed function of a commune or council is to serve as a link between people and state, a means of getting things done in an orderly, equitable and efficient manner. For ordinary people, a council or cooperative may be more evidently an organisational end, a new institution, a set of roles and resources, a bit of the state apparatus within their own reach, an embodiment of progress. Who this new organisation 'belongs' to can be deeply, and frustratingly, ambivalent. In official perspective, these epistemological problems are usually explained in terms of inadequate education and poor communications: a public which is better informed will comprehend the will of the state and respond more rationally and sympathetically. Consequently, even very poor countries have invested copiously in schools and broadcasting systems, using sophisticated technology to bridge the vexatious gap between 141

Organisations state and people. The use of mass media makes it very clear how development organisations are much better equipped to convey the interests of political leaders to the people, than the interests of the people to the national regime. The community and its development

In an essay on the meanings of community, Gusfield has observed that 'in one dimension it points to and describes a specific form of human association. In another it is part of a theory of change through social evolution. In still a third dimension, it is part of an ideological debate over the value of the present as compared to the past and to possible alternative futures' (1975: 21). In development planning images of community are very ambiguous: the 'natural' community is a point of departure for progressive transformation and yet the future for which we strive seems to envisage a recapture of the spirit of secure and convivial human community. Community is lost in the inexorable evolution towards industrial society, the transition to capitalism, Gesellschaft and 'modernity'. 'Very long ago', Bukharin and Preobrazhensky recall wistfully, 'when people lived in small communities, they worked together in comradely fashion (hunting, fishing, gathering fruit and roots), and they divided everything among themselves . . .' (1966: 31). A nostalgia for community is endemic among those who live in the higher echelons of capitalist society. The evolutionary journey to modernity is painful and, for liberals at least, planning is a necessary act of amelioration, an effort to diminish the anguish of change. Gusfield has noted the 'anguished cry against those facets of modern life in which men and women are categorized, isolated, typed and in which their specific qualities as human beings and as emotive and dependent persons are ignored' (1975: 104). As we shall see in Chapter 4, this hankering after the lost virtues of community is a distinguishing feature of populism and, as such, is a prevalent theme in the ideology of development. It is also, as Barrington Moore remarks (1967: 491ff.), a recurring theme in fascism and national socialism. For their part, socialists are notoriously evasive about communitarian ideals, readily seeing them as a manifestation of 'bourgeois romanticism', expressed in liberal styles of town planning and the commuter takeover of pretty villages on the urban periphery - evolue urban man's highly sanitised view of rustic bliss. Socialist enthusiasm for community is prospective rather than retrospective, a reconstruction rather than a refurbishing. In marxist imagery, this will not be a trivial affair: community will re-emerge on the grand scale, coextensive with society itself - 'a society of comrades . . . the co-operative organisation of all the members of society' (Bukharin & Preobrazhensky 1966: 70-1). The 142

The community and its development implausibility of this has been a source of great discomfort to socialists. Marx was evidently content to allow the communist future to take care of itself; in the meantime, the only historically progressive manifestation of community was the sense of belonging generated within conflicting social classes. Again, the meaning and power of this kind of social identity has been the object of much debate and speculation. Liberals and socialists would both agree that contemporary manifestations of community are deficient, but development policy often reveals ambiguity about whether the ideal community should be viewed retrospectively or prospectively: for example, China has variously sought to retain and work upon 'natural' villages, and to abolish these in favour of massive rationalised communes (Shillinglaw 1971: 156). However, there is evident consensus about the physical, if not the temporal location of the ideal community: it is, archetypally, the rural village. Although there is no reason to suppose that the urban community is inherently less pleasant, it is generally associated with a propensity for decay, squalor and disorder. For centuries, planners have sought to ameliorate the conditions of the town by importing (often in a very literal sense) the supposed benefits of the countryside. A good example is the 'garden cities' which proliferated in England and America around the turn of this century. However, the assumption that rusticity can foster social harmony has often proved false: rus in urbe tends to be appropriated by the upper classes, accentuating the physical discomfort and relative deprivation of the poor (see Mann 1965: 115-48). The positive images with which the real communities of today are unfavourably compared have, we would argue, a high degree of uniformity, particularly in the minds of that educated, international elite from which the cadre of development planners is drawn. In stereotype, the community is simple, homogeneous, harmonious, durable and relatively autonomous. Let us consider each of these images in turn, noting the ways in which it appears to have influenced approaches to planned development and the design of development organisations. A basic tenet of functionalist theories of social evolution is that the community is simple, and that urban industrial development renders society increasingly complex. It is presumed that community cohesion depends on personal ('face-to-face') interaction, and that this cannot plausibly be sustained when the group exceeds a certain size. Smallness, durability and intensity of activity may qualify almost any group for the label community - workers on a shop floor or even, under certain circumstances, people standing in a queue or sitting in a railway carriage. Twentieth-century theories of social change have emphasised the contrast between simple village and complex city. Robert Redfield's explanation of the 'little tradition' of the rural community yielding inexorably 143

Organisations to the 'great tradition' of the city has been particularly influential (1953). Many sociologists would now admit that this contrast has been overstated. One of the hazards of the image of the simple village is that it has encouraged simplistic approaches to rural development. Mechanistic devices like the 'demonstration effect' have seldom been thought appropriate in urban development. In 1960, Pocock was moved to complain of an intellectually and practically disastrous dichotomy between 'village India' and 'urban India' - each with its own sociology and development strategy. Since then social scientists have been more concerned to insist on the continuity of these two falsely contraposed worlds. A substantial case can be made for the social complexity of village life. Frankenberg (1966: 17) has made the point that while urban life is undoubtedly complicated, involving highly differentiated activities and a vast range of choice, social life in the village can be much more complex. City life involves ramifying networks of specific 'single strand' relationships among numerous individuals - shopper/shop assistant, priest/ parishioner, parent/teacher. Urban communities are accordingly more diffuse and overlap in complicated ways. Within a more clearly bounded village community, relationships between two people tend to be 'multiplex': my neighbour may be the local grocer, a fellow parishioner, chairman of the parent-teacher association, captain of the darts club, and so on. He is not simply 'the grocer', he is a complex, multi-faceted personality summed up in his identity 'Jim Smith'. The complexity of this pattern of interaction is made evident if I have a dispute with Mr Smith in the parent-teacher association: although I may now feel disinclined to patronise his shop I may have no practicable alternative. A friendly word from the village priest may help to patch things up. The solidarity of the rural community, much admired by townsmen and notoriously elusive to the newcomer or the commuter, is long in the making and is as much the product of constraint as of friendly altruism. Community life is sustained and elaborated by casual interaction, and by more formalised patterns of symbolic and material exchange: polite greetings are essential even though they are devoid of significant information, and failure to attend a feast or a church bazaar may be a richly expressive gesture, the object of censure by that characteristically communitarian idiom of communication-gossip. From this it follows that simple technical devices emanating from outside the community are unlikely to transform social relationships very rapidly. As Bailey (1971) has stated very forcefully, the community is most solidary and most discriminating when its members are confronting outsiders - particularly officials. However, many who might admit this social complexity (and designate it an obstacle to development) would still insist on the technical simplicity of village life, and regard technical 144

The community and its development innovation as an irresistible wedge which can be driven into the fabric of community life. Such attitudes are again reinforced by evolutionary theories of change, and by contrasts like the apparent simplicity of hoe agriculture and the complexity of motor car manufacture. Recent detailed empirical study of non-capitalist productive systems has helped to modify this image of technical simplicity; the problems of the 'green revolution' have, in particular, drawn attention to the sophisticated 'traditional' technology of farming communities and have revealed some alarming contrasts: an Asian village may once have had over a hundred named varieties of rice seedstock, the use of which involved elaborate knowledge and skill. Likewise, apparently crude implements have shown a high degree of functional refinement. By contrast, the use of two or three High Yielding Varieties of rice or wheat, the spreading of fertiliser from paper packets, and the hiring of tractors from the local pool, can only be described as simple. The farmer does not need to know chemical formulae or how to maintain the internal combustion engine. We may go further and remark that machine operators who are trained in a couple of weeks would fare poorly even after a couple of years' experience on the peasant farm. It is dispiriting to reflect that the introduction of new and apparently highly productive technology is not, as is often supposed, an introduction to the complexities of modern life, it is the sacrifice of a complex, tried-and-tested husbandry for one which is dangerously simply (v. Harrissl977). A related image of community is its supposed homogeneity. Of India, Hanson has complained that 'rural development policies have rested on an ideologically-inspired assumption of a degree of unity and common purpose among the peasantry that is at variance with the realities of village life' (1966: 534). Villages are thought of as modular, both in their constituents and in their replication throughout a country or region. Marx's truculent image of peasants as potatoes in a sack - some big, some small, but all morphologically the same unappetising object - may no longer be taken very seriously, nevertheless 'the household' is still regarded as the universal building block of the rural community. It is used almost without question as the standard unit for investigation, statistical aggregation, comparison, analysis and explanation. This often shows too little regard for other important sub-groupings, and for the ways in which processes of residence, property-holding, collaboration, consumption, worship or recreation transect households. In a sense, community members have themselves to blame for this external presumption of homogeneity. One of the defining features of community is its presentation to outsiders of a uniform collective identity, saliently distinguished from that of other communities or groups with which it might be confused. A Ghanaian proverb, echoed in various forms 145

Organisations throughout the world, asserts that every village has its own distinctive way of cooking a chicken. However, what Bailey calls the 'moral community' (1971: 302) is a highly relative affair, a segmental hierarchy of identities extending through family and village, work-group or caste, district or town, to wider ethnic or regional categories. 'The community' is thus contingent: there are communities within communities, like Chinese boxes, and which level 'matters' at any moment depends largely on circumstances and how the people involved choose to define themselves. Ultimately the term dissolves into metaphor - the community of nations, the European Economic Community - a grandiose evocation of the spirit of unity and solidarity which is supposed to prevail among villagers. If villagers are deemed to think and act in the same way, it may be assumed that they will act in unison in a development programme. What is good for one household will surely be good for all; and by extension what is good for one potato-like village will surely be good for all others in a particular region. Long ago, Dube observed: An innovation is rarely accepted by the community in the form in which it is presented or for the purpose it is intended by the promoters of change. It is subjected to a regular process of cultural screening at different levels, by the elite, the informal groups and factions, and the leaders of caste and kin groups. In passing through so many filters it often changes forms and meaning. (1958: 129)

The assumption of homogeneity may raise false hopes about a concerted response to some proposed innovation or development programme, and it is also a hazardous premise for the replication of 'package' projects throughout a region. There is no doubt that the anthropologist's readiness to provide modal descriptions of households, villages and regions has contributed to these images of social homogeneity; for their part, project planners have depended on simplified accounts and have little use for fine-grained images of social differentiation. Even those sufficiently aware of the realities of community life to acknowledge the extent of social differentiation may still cleave to the potent normative image of harmony. In reality, this may be no more than a mask of solidarity which community members present to outsiders. The experience of fieldwork has persuaded many anthropologists that the community is an uneasy truce rather than the embodiment of altruism (much the same might be said of a 'community' of nation states). As we shall see, the presumption of harmony underlies many efforts to establish Cooperatives and Communes, but conflict is a prevalent - some would say necessary - part of all social organisation. As Frankenberg has remarked, people living in 'face-to-face' communities spend a great deal of their time back-to-back (1966: 238). A sense of contrast is the essence of social identity: all social units, persons, communities or states, are 146

The community and its development largely defined by opposition to parallel units. Such divisions of interest and identity may be latent but may erupt into open conflict when some new activity, such as a development project, presents itself. The image of community harmony has been reinforced by functionalist theories of social integration. In one sense, the community is seen as organically integrated with its habitat, its distinctive features deriving in large measure from the way in which its people are obliged to make a living. In another sense, activities in a community are seen as fitting together in a complex equation, mutually reinforcing and equilibrating: there is a systematic relationship among economic institutions, religious beliefs, legal codes, and so on. In this perspective, change in one area of activity will inevitably dislocate others, and if equilibrium cannot be restored social breakdown will result. In the city, change is so endemic that communities have little prospect of coherence, and 'anomie' prevails. Functional theories of integration place much faith in the normative force of altruism, and assume that a desire for orderly and mutually beneficial coactivity will overcome social entropy. Political institutions are seen as very important in providing a structure of leadership and social constraint, an orderly method for reconciling divergent interests and a machinery for dealing with new and potentially disruptive eventualities - such as development projects. As we shall see, new councils and committees have come to play an important part in the organisation of planned development. Functionalist images have helped to counteract assumptions that the course of social change is either simple or predictable. They have also provided a rationale for the principle of continuity which is supposed to characterise community life. Today, this is a very ambivalent image: although we live in an era urgently committed to ideas of change, the virtues of social continuity embodied in the notion of the timeless village seem very appealing. A normative structure is bred into a rural community through generations, providing a secure set of criteria for what is right and wrong. In symbol and ritual this conservative fabric is restated and reinforced, becoming part of timeless 'tradition'. While this is in one sense admirable, in another it is the fundamental obstacle to 'modernisation' and to development efforts. A fundamental misapprehension of nearly all images of continuity in social life is that it implies inertia. While society is certainly a structure it is also a process, with the relentless cycle of birth, procreation and death as its mainspring. Maintaining community can be an arduous and very active business: the sleepy demeanour of the village may be very misleading. As writers like James Scott (1976) have insisted, poor people have to work very hard to sustain an unimpressive level of welfare, and to preserve some necessary but unimpressive social institutions. In such circum147

Organisations stances the invitation to innovate may be received with scepticism, but to assume that this response is apathy is an insult born of ignorance. All communities depend on activity, not passivity, in their relentless struggle with the seasons, with demographic growth and in the long term with historical change. Continuity is maintained by the means of elaborate verbal and non-verbal communication whose meaning may be largely lost on outsiders, or dismissed as 'quaint' cultural and dialectical traits. Social processes certainly help to maintain the discrete identity of the community, but they also serve to link it with the wider world. Although today there can be very few truly autarkic communities, ideas of the selfcontained rural village still seem to be very prevalent. The growth of the nation state has diminished the relative autonomy which any community may hitherto have enjoyed. Ernest Gellner has remarked that Villagesized social units are no longer competent to produce fully life-sized human beings. A Nuer village can still produce a Nuer, but it is incapable of producing an effective Sudanese citizen' (1964:158). In India, Chad or Brazil, there are very few aspects of village life which are not in some way the concern of government officials. It therefore seems a little perverse that planned development, one of the principal instruments of this intrusion, should generally presume that villagers should have an inherent capacity to 'help themselves' to modernisation. The 'self-contained' community has a physical image associated with it which merits comment. It seems that in development planning the ideal community is compact and nucleated - witness the planning of most rural settlement schemes. 'Villageisation' is a recurrent theme, and dispersed settlement is generally viewed as incompatible with progress. Social rationales of coherence, integration and security are commonly evoked, but economic and political efficiency may be more realistic justifications: nucleation facilitates the provision of services and the bulking of produce, and it also provides a more coherent political node on which officialdom can gain some effective purchase. A compact, reaggregated community may be capable of taking more concerted action on its own account, but it is also a more convenient unit for external manipulation. The Malaysian land development programme discussed in Chapter 5 illustrates this very clearly. Worsley has declared that 'in many underdeveloped societies, the populist celebration of the peasant, particularly celebration of the "communitarian" aspect of village society, remains simply part of the ideological armoury of rhetoric . . . lodged in party programmes and national mythology, but unimportant in practice' (1969: 234). Here we are arguing that objective images of community have a much wider and more pervasive force in conceptions of development and the ways in which it is planned and put into effect. Populist images have a power which is not 148

The community and its development simply rhetorical; throughout the Third World senior civil servants and cabinet ministers still imagine themselves to be villagers at heart, and enact this belief by driving home to their farms at weekends and donning country garb. They can be deeply wounded by sociological assertions that their understanding of communal realities is phoney, and that their prescriptions for progress are accordingly flawed. Yet the mutual incomprehension of official and villager has been made manifest repeatedly in the meagre progress of costly development projects. 'Community Development' is a notion which reached its apogee in the confident, technocratic decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Probably the grandest and most celebrated Community Development exercise was put into operation in India as the main instrument of the First Five-Year Plan (1951-6). It was inspired by Gandhist images of the 'organic' community: moral, integral, and with a capacity for self-regulation and improvement which had been inhibited by so many years of British rule (see Maddick 1970). Its purpose was to transform India's villages but at the same time, ambiguously, to leave their inherent structure intact. In fulfilment of the Independence Constitution, the Community Development Programme (CDP) sought to build a new bridge between the people and the state; it was to be 'a social process in which, in some part, every citizen should have the opportunity to participate . . . it should embody the impact of public opinion and the needs of the community' (Dube 1958: 6). It was hoped that the CDP would have 'a lasting effect on village India' (op. cit.: 12): by focussing on that 83% of the population who were 'villagers', the 'immediate' goal was 'to provide for a substantial increase in the country's agricultural production, and for improvements in the system of communications, in rural health and hygiene, and in village education'. 'Ultimate' goals were 'to initiate and direct a process of integrated culture change aimed at transforming the social and economic life of the villages' (op. cit.: 8). The CDP was inspired by Community Development efforts in other countries, notably the USA which contributed extensively to Indian development under President Truman's 'Point Four' programme. The scale of the CDP was impressive: more than US$200 millions were budgeted for the quinquennium, and the Programme extended to 20,000 villages. It was managed by a complex bureaucratic hierarchy headed by the Minister of Community Development. Beneath him were State and District Development Commissioners and Project Executive Officers, each with special Advisory Boards. Ultimately the whole venture depended on a mass of multi-functional Village Level Workers. The complexity of the CDP, to which we shall refer throughout this chapter, was part of its downfall, but in retrospect it seems that the main reason for failure rested in the overambitious ideals on which the Programme was 149

Organisations founded: based on the homogeneous, harmonious structure of 'village India', change could be a relatively simple, technical affair. The experience of the CDP promoted a much more cautious approach to rural development, in the sub-continent and elsewhere. In general parlance, 'Community Development' has come to mean something much less ambitious, for example social welfare work in towns and cities. However, the old broadly focussed, inclusive approach seems to have resurfaced in the fashionable 'integrated package' strategy of rural development, as well as in the efforts of socialist states to promote the development of communes. In these, images of social and technical simplicity, homogeneity, harmony, continuity and relative autonomy linger on, as tokens of the strong but very ambivalent ideas we have of the meanings of community. Administrative organisation: development agents and agencies

Community and bureaucracy are two evidently antithetical styles of social organisation which serve to distinguish the two major protagonists in planned development: the people and the state. Each word has a distinct but at the same time ambiguous moral gloss, the depersonalised efficiency of the bureaucratic ideal contrasting with the particularistic solidarities of the communitarian ideal; communitarian elements in bureaucracy are readily identified as 'corrupt', and bureaucratic elements in community are very alienating. In most styles of analysis they are historically distinct, poles apart on the evolutionary trajectory from tradition to modernity. Insofar as it seeks to combine the virtues of community and the virtues of bureaucracy, planned development is therefore fraught with contradictions. Modern man would probably judge bureaucracy as a necessary evil, a logical consequence of the growth of industrial society, a necessary framework for the nation state. It has become a cardinal principle in our daily lives: 'Bureaucracy is the kinship of modern man' (Gellner 1964: 154); but it is also less congenial, 'the social counterpart of the machine' (Mumford 1946). It is a rational, technical response to the ever-increasing scale of industrial society. Bureaucracy, sustained by profits, is the structure of capitalist enterprise; and bureaucracy, sustained by taxes and levies, is the structure of the modern state. It epitomises the social contract: a system of legal regulation sustained by a cadre of appointed officials. Large-scale society has evolved no more efficient means for maintaining political order. Planning is a sine qua non of bureaucracy - it is the exercise of rationality, the fundamental expression of purposive, technical action. It is the means whereby bureaucracies fulfil their wider social functions but it is 150

Development agents and agencies also the means whereby they generate and regenerate themselves. The extent to which public bureaucracies are preoccupied with their own interests has become a pressing issue in development planning. As we have noted, planning in most countries is predicated on a belief that popular will is expressed in the actions of governing officials. This democratic idealism, which raises false hopes of public consensus and compliance, is as much a tenet of the liberal state as of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The highest degree of order and consensus achieved in communist society will apparently permit the perfection of bureaucracy: When everything is done according to a prearranged plan and when the social order is like a well-oiled machine, all will work in accordance with the indications of these statistical bureaux. (Bukharin & Preobrazhensky 1966: 74) Conflict between the machinery of the state and the will of individual citizens is one of the oldest themes in social science. So too is the discrepancy between social ideal and reality which sociologists would probably agree lies at the heart of the 'problem of bureaucracy'. Weber's celebrated 'ideal-typical' model has characterised bureaucracy by its dependence on rationally defined rules. The bureau was the hub of the organisation and formalised communication depended essentially on written documents - memoranda, minutes and accounts. Offices were acquired by impersonal qualification and promotion was on prescribed criteria of merit. Although Weber was at pains to stress that his model was analytical, not prescriptive, his work has led to some overstatement of the normative framework of bureaucracy. Subsequent commentators have made the point that the bureaucratic virtues of efficiency and equity do not necessarily depend on a close correspondence of rule and action (v. Downs 1967). Indeed, 'working to rule' is one of the surest ways of bringing the bureaucratic machine to a standstill. From this it follows that formal education alone does not make the successful bureaucrat, even though it may qualify him for office. There are interesting discontinuities between administrative training, official practice, and sociological analysis. The teaching of public administration and the sociology of organisations have developed as distinct and at times mutually antagonistic disciplines. W.H. Whyte has observed that sociological diagnoses may even be regarded as an impediment to effective performance of bureaucratic roles (1960: 62ff.). In developing countries a high value is placed on 'proper' administration. Personnel are trained in schools of Public Administration at home and overseas, and bureaucratic efficiency is one of the main criteria of international respectability and creditworthiness. Although this may be regarded as an inevitable response to the growth of industrialism and the nation state, it is also clear that the styles of public and commercial 151

Organisations administration in Fiji or Peru have not developed spontaneously, but have been diffused from Euro-American centres during the last hundred years. Even cultural idiosyncrasies which catch the visitor's eye (the candlelit shrine in the Hong Kong PWD office, applicants prostrating themselves before the DC in Uganda) cannot disguise the fundamental similarity of the bureaucratic framework. A coherent history of what Apter (1963) has called 'institutional transfer' has still to be written, but it would include important sequences like the transfer of Indian civil service staff and procedures to African countries in the years following the Second World War. It is probable that the paradigm of the politically neutral civil service attained its highest degree of complexity and ornamentation in British India - indeed it has been said that the ICS experience was a potent influence in the mother country. It is certainly curious that shortly after independence in Ghana President Nkrumah should have engaged Indian administrative advisers, evidently assuming that they would be freer of imperial habits than the departing British officials. In Third World countries it is understandable that there should be conspicuous discrepancies between administrative realities and the largely exogenous bureaucratic ideals. While the official frameworks of the state remain sacrosanct, failure to implement an ambitious development plan will be blamed on various kinds of cultural, social or even congenital incapacity. Attempts to find bureaucratic solutions only give momentum to the dispiriting downward spiral: deficiencies in performance are countered by the elaboration of more rules and controls; pragmatic attempts to deal with these are regarded as ineptitude or corruption, and further regulations are invoked. In this process, developing countries are as likely to be criticised for having too much bureaucracy as too little. Perhaps the most notorious example is India, with its relays of checkers monitoring official checkers, but countries like Tanzania which respond to almost any contingency by launching a new commission or para-statal agency are fast following suit. The ramification of government departments dissipates control from the centre while at the same time the expansion of a bureaucratic class reinforces the boundaries between the people and the state. Schaffer (1973, 1974) has pointed out that under such circumstances, when bureaux become more numerous they also become more compartmentalised, acting in ignorance of or at cross purposes with each other. From the point of view of the public this presents an incomprehensible diversity of offices and functions. According to Riggs, the sprawling bureaucracies of developing countries tend to subsume most other political processes, obliterating any notion of a 'neutral' civil service and displacing 'democratic' processes. The concentration of political power within the state machine is in inverse proportion to its adminis152

Development agents and agencies trative effectiveness. In a 'more developed' system (i.e., one with more differentiated political and administrative institutions), government is less fraught with inter-departmental disputes, and more capable of providing public service. In Third World bureaucracies, Riggs gloomily notes, rules are made not simply in the knowledge that they may be honoured in the breach but in the certainty that they will be infringed systematically. All this leads to 'double talk and blocked throughput' (Riggs 1964: 195). Working within such a framework, no official however zealous and efficient can provide a remedy; the only solution is the antibureaucratic action of a charismatic leader who can appropriate enough power to cut a path through the swathes of red tape. An administrative bureaucracy which is profoundly absorbed in its own internal processes pays little heed to its public. Schaffer has written very instructively on the problems of 'access' to officialdom in the Third World. In particular, he has drawn attention to that universal by-product of bureaucracy, the queue: queueing, as Englishmen abroad have discovered, is not something which people do spontaneously, it is an extension of official constraints which seek to maintain order, efficiency and equity among prospective clients (Schaffer 1973: 289). Apparently a device for presenting the public to the civil servant, it has the effect of placing clients in a subservient position to the man behind the counter, a mundane reminder of the gulf between ruler and ruled. In functionalist language, efficient bureaucracy is closely integrated with the public it serves and is also closely integrated internally: communication up and down the hierarchy is rapid and effective and there is a high degree of symmetry in the organisation and operation of parallel units at each level. The salience of this in countries where bureaucracies are expanding and proliferating requires some stress: a national administration whose base units (for example, district offices) are all organised differently and operate idiosyncratically will be virtually impossible to control from the centre. A concern for devolution or local adaptation may encourage a government to allow considerable licence to local offices; if the government has little control to exert, this licence will be acquired de facto. In either case the results can be chaotic. As Weber pointed out, the lower a unit is in the bureaucratic hierarchy, the greater the need for conformity and organisational uniformity. By corollary, it is only in the upper echelons that 'non-bureaucratic' behaviour - the personal whims of a powerful Managing Director - may be tolerated. In many weak bureaucracies there is a tendency for power to be appropriated much lower down the hierarchy in a way which contributes only to the welfare of the individuals involved. As the organisation and operation of offices degenerates into highly differentiated fiefdoms, orderly communications disintegrate into noise. The judicious bending of rules on which even the 153

Organisations most efficient bureaucracy depends becomes very destructive if there is too much bending too low down the pyramid. One solution to these problems of hierarchic control, institutional sprawl and limited public access, much favoured by colonial government and perpetuated in most post-colonial states, is the near-omnipotent local political officer. Variously labelled the District Commissioner, Collector, Governor or Magistrate, this intermediate role concentrates a wide range of functions and powers in the hands of a single highly trained and carefully selected individual. Typically, he has the capacity to deal with virtually any contingency from epidemic to insurrection, acts as ombudsman in dealings with the public and between government departments, and can assume almost any official role in the area of his jurisdiction. The concatenation of functions which can occur is amusingly illustrated in this case from colonial Malaya: the District Officer 'caught out a PWD overseer misappropriating funds, laid an information as O/C PWD, issued a warrant as Magistrate, arrested him as CPO, prosecuted him in Court, then, sitting as Magistrate, accepted his plea of guilty, sentenced him to imprisonment, and finally as O/C prisons, led him off to gaol' (quoted in Beaglehole 1976: 17). A wider distribution of these roles would probably have been more equitable, if less expeditious. Certainly such a heavy concentration of functions places a heavy demand on the integrity of the individual. The schooling and selection of British colonial officers is now part of administrative mythology, but the process has been taken no less seriously in independent India or independent Ivory Coast (see Staniland 1971). As Ghana approached Independence and the expatriate cadre yielded to local officials, the title 'District Commissioner' was considered anachronistic, and 'Government Agent' was adopted instead. Under the government of Kwame Nkrumah, 'DC was revived but, having become in effect a political office it was changed, after the 1966 police-military coup d'etat, to 'District Administrative Officer' (see Dunn and Robertson 1973: 153ff.). Throughout, functions and powers remained remarkably similar, and have in many respects been enhanced by deficiencies in other departments of the administration and by the failure to establish representative local government. Superintending development efforts has become one of the new functions of the local political officer. Dube notes that District Collectors in India were considered to be too authoritarian and too closely associated with the epoch of colonial rule to take an effective role in the Community Development Programme in the 1950s. Accordingly a new Executive Officer was put in charge of each Project, was exhorted to go out among the people and get 'dirty hands' (1958: 87). The Collectors have outlived this innovation and with the collapse of the CDP added a general responsibility for development to their multifarious roles. In organising 154

Development agents and agencies development, the model of the political officer has been very influential: it is recognised that to keep a project moving a single individual must be licensed to make pragmatic responses to local contingencies and to bureaucratic obstructions. As we have already seen, large organisations from the Tennessee Valley Authority onwards have acquired para-statal powers and powerful bosses - and have been a source of great vexation to ordinary government officials working in the region. A single individual with wide-ranging powers usually makes more sense to the public than a battery of different government offices. The DC or project manager will undoubtedly be badgered by ordinary people who have their own simplified understanding of his position as an intermediary between them and the powers of the state. Training, selection and remuneration of such officials usually recognises the status and political acumen which satisfactory performance of their roles entails. They may often have to juggle with their official responsibilities on the one hand and a sense of loyalty to 'their people' on the other. This is a predicament very familiar to the colonial DC: official records often complain of officers who 'went native', and a certain degree of local sympathy could readily be equated with 'running a slack district'. It seems that DCs who were revered by their superiors for their efficiency were not those who have been fondly memorialised by the people among whom they worked. This is probably no less true of the post-colonial states; the assumption that indigenous officials would have greater popular understanding as well as a more intimate identification with the interest of the state has not always proved correct. Officials often like to protest that they are villagers at heart, but 'real' villagers are unlikely to find such a presentation of self very convincing. The ideal of the bureaucratic hierarchy assumes a unanimity of interest which is always at variance with reality. However firmly public policy may be enunciated and however intricately programmes may be circumscribed, the interests of senior ministerial or departmental officials will never be the same as those of subordinate officials. This is partly a function of the division of administrative labour, but it also expresses the fact that all bureaucracies are, in actuality if not in ideal, political arenas. Figure 3.1 illustrates, somewhat in caricature, the kinds of attitudes which units at different levels in a large development organisation may have about themselves and each other, and which serve to 'refract' or even substantially change a programme while it is being implemented. Thus, Head Office's clear schematic view of a resettlement project will be modified by the Regional Office's knowledge of political expediencies and by the Project Office's understanding of what is practicable. Even in what are usually thought of as very rigid bureaucratic hierarchies upward pressure can be very influential: Nove (1969: 78) has remarked on the influence of 155

Organisations enterprise managers in Soviet planning, a persistent argument from below which tends to 'soften' targets, quotas and schedules dictated from above (see also M. Ellman 1979: 43ff.)\ John Rex has remarked on interesting similarities between bureaucrat and proletarian. Neither has property rights in the facilities which are essential to his work, but the crucial difference is that while the proletarian sells his labour by the week, the bureaucrat sells it by the life (Rex 1961: 142). His security rests on his career expectations in the bureaucracy rather than on his relations with the public whose interests he has been commissioned to serve. From below, bureaucracy appears altogether more rigid, domineering and unsympathetic than it does from above. Supervisors require both obedience and pragmatism, but with little evident recognition of the skill required in combining these conflictFig. 3.1. Some attitudes of officials at three levels of a development organisation (This figure records impressions formed by the author while working with a large development organisation in an African country) Attitudes OF

I

TOWARDS HEADQUARTERS

HQ

controlling informed complex responsible long-range concerns

REGIONAL OFFICE administrative coordinating obstructive

PROJECT OFFICE LOCAL PEOPLE executive procedural inefficient evasive short-term concerns

managerial mediating pragmatic politically fraught

executive inefficient unresponsive unreliable

beneficiaries to be manipulated unreliable raw material to be manipulated differentiated: the compliant, the obstructive

REGION

overbearing unsympathetic normative synoptic

PROJECT

distant authoritarian unrealistic ill-informed over-rewarded

officious meddlesome

complex technical pragmatic realistic undervalued under-rewarded

PEOPLE

'Government'

'Government'

'Government officials'

156

underprivileged to be persuaded undifferentiated

Development agents and agencies ing virtues. A good rapport with the public is as likely to confine a junior official to the local office as is ineptitude; similarly, formal criteria of promotion may either underrate the pragmatic skills required in the management of humble offices, or elevate talented and ambitious officials to levels at which such skills are less urgently required. Dube has provided one of the most illuminating accounts of the humble development official. The Village Level Worker (VLW) in the Indian Community Development Programme was seen as 'a pivotal figure in the movement for rural community development', a government official and at the same time a friend and adviser of the people; his task was to both stimulate and satisfy their 'felt needs' (Dube 1958:191,157). His responsibilities extended to the full compass of CDP activities, from agriculture, health and sanitation to local councils, publicity and religious affairs. In the Project area studied by Dube, most of the VLWs were under thirty-five, most had been transferred from junior positions in other government departments, and all were 'village men' (op. cit.: 159). They were attracted to the job by promotion prospects as well as by the novelty of the CDP and the publicity which it had been given. In Dube's view, successful management of this complex and demanding role depended essentially on personal and pragmatic qualities, but the VLWs themselves felt that success depended on honesty, humility, hard work, impartiality, moderateness, good coordination and determination (op. cit.: 180, 169). They complained that they were overworked, were allowed little freedom of expression, and had only sporadic contact with their seniors, who tended to treat them as 'subordinate officials' or 'younger brothers' (op. cit.: 166-7). In their relationships with local people the VLWs discovered that the 'rural elite' had the best understanding of their role and of the CDP generally. The very poor people were amenable, but the lowest levels of understanding and cooperation were encountered among the artisanal and occupational castes. The VLWs plainly understood the strategic skills required of them in their dealings with the public: The VLWs appear to have definite ideas on the subject of the group or groups of people in the village through whom they can work most successfully. Thirteen showed an unmistakable preference for 'successful cultivators with no factional affiliations'. Two said they had to work through 'men with official connexions and political influence' because they considered it a good policy to keep them pleased. (Dube 1958: 166)

In 1967 a UNESCO study (Hyman et al.) discovered that three quarters of a sample of development officials working in the field regarded schoolteachers as reliable intermediaries. About a half thought other government officials and 'youth' were suitable, but only 16% favoured merchants and most of them eschewed the older generation and 'traditional' 157

Organisations specialists like medicine men. The preference for schoolteachers is not difficult to understand: through their pupils, the desired commodity of education, and the respect often accorded to the pedagogue, they have a useful purchase on the community, but at the same time they are very accessible to the bureaucracy. They are literate, have a clearer understanding of the structures and processes of officialdom than other local people, and probably share the development agent's 'progressive' views of the world. They probably also welcome the enhanced career opportunities which official patronage can bring: many of them are young immigrants to rural communities, marginal people who are much more receptive to contacts with outsiders. They can usually be depended upon to take up secretarial or managerial roles in local development committees or cooperative societies (see Maddick 1970: 153). By contrast, local merchants may be presumed to have more material kinds of selfinterest and little access to local consensus. As Selznick's study of the Tennessee Valley Authority makes clear, large development projects depend more on political relationships with interest groups than with individuals. Working through these 'administrative constituencies' (1949: 262) can be problematic, providing a necessary basis for public support but at the same time restricting the access of other 'uncoopted' groups and individuals. It may provide a false kind of legitimacy, a means of 'sharing the burdens and responsibilities for power, rather than power itself (op. cit.: 264). If it cannot suppress political factors, officialdom must seek to monopolise them, but it often does so at the expense of public compliance. The rational, technical ideals of bureaucracy usually offer little guidance on these strategic issues which ultimately determine the success or failure or a project. Officials must be given licence to act expeditiously: the imprest account or slush fund is an example of the way a bureaucracy may be obliged to place resources at the disposal of project managers, while recognising their inability to give an orthodox account of its disbursement. Bailey (1969) has drawn attention to the pragmatic skills which a development agent requires: he is engaged in a political and economic enterprise involving investments, gains and losses, with his own career as part of the stakes. In the image of a game, the official may find himself playing a variety of roles: he may arrive as the sponsor of a new competition,bearing the 'prize' of funds, materials or government patronage; he may act as referee in the ensuing interfactional contest; he may attempt to 'coach' the people to play the game according to his own preferred rules rather than theirs; he may become a player, either alone or in coalition with others. If he is unskilful he may commit himself to a losing team, or even become one of the resources for which other players compete. The strategic skill of local politicians should never be underrated, and a good many young and 158

Development agents and agencies ambitious officials have been outmanoeuvred, and left stripped of their resources, dignity and career prospects. The development officer is usually obliged to play more than one game simultaneously, seeking gains both among his local clients and in that lifetime contest of his bureaucratic career. It is understandable if he should be more determined to succeed in the latter than in the former. Games imagery has entered the vocabulary of development administration in interesting ways. An example is the 'team', a cohort of officials thrown into the local development contest. Usually it is an optimistic effort to reconvene in particular localities junior officers from different departments - health, agriculture, cooperatives, education - whose activities are otherwise very compartmentalised. It is hoped that they will be able to set aside their several bureaucratic loyalties to make a concerted assault on a programme or project, perhaps under the direction of a specially appointed 'team leader' or manager. In the Indian CDP the team was represented as a manifestation of 'inner democratisation': For developing a democratic outlook the staff of the Project was to work as a team. The traditional authoritarian 'boss-subordinate' relationships were to yield to the new concept of co-operative and democratic functioning of the development units; the superior officials were not to oversee and 'inspect' the work of their subordinates, they were to work jointly with them and solve the practical problems and difficulties arising in the field. (Dube 1958: 90) Inevitably, reality did not measure up to this ideal: Theoretically the subordinates could express themselves freely, but in practice they realized that it only antagonized their official superiors. As their promotion and prospects depended greatly on the goodwill of the officers, they found it more practical and profitable to adopt an attitude of uniform compliance to the wishes of higher officials. (Dube 1958: 91)

An appeal for cohesion and 'inner democratisation' across the base of a sprawling and compartmentalised government hierarchy may be as much a gesture of despair as a gesture of optimism. In some countries, the 'District Team' has become institutionalised, ostensibly to expedite administration and development efforts; to the jaundiced eye it looks more like a last ditch stand against bureaucratic collapse. In ideal, the coherence of a bureaucratic hierarchy is secured by responsibility to superiors, not by licence to inferiors. Power is necessarily centripetal and its downward delegation must be strictly rationed and counterbalanced if the hierarchy is to survive. Today the public bureaucracies are the principal embodiment of the nation state, the means by which it seeks to maintain civil order and arrange social and economic progress. Even though we may find neither states nor bureaucracy very endearing it is plain that - for the foreseeable future - we will be 159

Organisations unable to live without them, and will gain nothing from their decay or collapse.

Economic organisation: cooperatives and communes

The persistent worldwide enthusiasm for Cooperative organisation, notwithstanding its many failures, probably owes something to semantics. It is nicer to be cooperative than to be uncooperative. Cooperation is synonymous with the effective functioning of society; as the division of social and economic labour it is also imperative to human progress. From time to time throughout history, people have made a specific issue of cooperation: fired as much by individual needs as by altruism they have formed associations for mutual assistance. As we shall see in Chapter 4, these historic social movements have been a source of inspiration for the contemporary state-sponsored variants of Cooperativism and Communalism. It is important to recognise that they have become highly specific, institutionalised versions of that more general cooperation which makes for social cohesion: they are the product of an international process of diffusion and, although they have undoubtedly taken on local colour, owe their existence to the modern nation state and to planned development. England is commonly regarded as 'the home of modern cooperation' (Worsley 1971: 8), and Robert Owen (1771-1858) as its founding father. Reformist and paternalist, Owen was morally affronted by British poverty and unemployment after the Napoleonic wars. He rejected the Speenhamland system of parochial poor-relief which seemed to imply that the poor were the victims of their own depravity: The character of man is formed for him, not by him', he insisted. Given the opportunity, rational and honest working people would quickly perceive the advantages of sharing labour, resources and profits. In 1800 he put his principles to work in his textile factory at New Lanark in Scotland; a true social technician, he devised new systems of reward, education and retailing, and wrote about his experiences with missionary zeal. In October 1830, twenty-eight flannel weavers from the impoverished town of Rochdale in Lancashire, enthused by Owen's work, contributed twopence each a week to form a Friendly Society. The purpose of these famous 'Pioneers', many of them unemployed, was to produce and supply woollen goods, but their most celebrated achievement was the Cooperative store they opened at Toad Lane in Rochdale. By 1875 it had nineteen branches, 8,415 members, profits of £48,212 for the year, and a turnover exceeding £300,000 (Holyoake 1908: 287). The testimony of this positive case has been potent, and time and again poor people in many different countries 160

Cooperatives and communes have been persuaded to pool their money and then, with a little patience, watch their assets multiply. Owenite ideas spread to the poor farming areas of North America and, by way of liberal-minded colonial officials, throughout Africa and Asia. With its various training colleges, expanding literature and practical experience, Cooperativism has become institutionalised, even respectable. However, those who fear that it is the advance guard of communism are undoubtedly mistaken. With its premises of mutual aid for individual gain (Worsley 1971: 2), Cooperativism has become increasingly distinct from rival doctrines of Collectivism or Communalism, predicated on joint ownership of productive resources. The 'scientific socialism' of Marx and Engels damned Owen's technical reformism with faint praise, and saw his eventual lapse into Christian millenarianism as inevitable. It is perhaps surprising that marxist dogma on the socialisation of production, notoriously vague and subject to multifarious interpretation, should have been so influential during the twentieth century. Like the Rochdale Pioneers and Cooperativism, communalism has depended on the working-out of influential paradigms, conspicuously in post-revolutionary Russia. Thereafter the process of imitation has been intensified, developing nations seeking authentic ways of putting socialism into practice: thus the Soviet kolkhoz inspired the Israeli Moshav, which was in turn exported (without notable success) to Western Nigeria (Roider 1971). Cooperativism is insignificant in Britain today. In agriculture the movement began late and acquired little impetus (Morley 1975). While almost every High Street has its Cooperative retail store, this is - ideologically and functionally - a vestige of the Toad Lane original: some customers are shareholders, all are rewarded with trading stamps as in the competing supermarkets. These consumer 'Coops' may be placed at one end of a continuum, extending from institutions with very limited functions but highly voluntaristic on the one hand, to the all-embracing statemobilised commune on the other. This continuum is illustrated in Figure 3.2, and its implications will be discussed in the following paragraphs. In October 1969 Julius Nyerere addressed a large gathering of Swedish enthusiasts on the 'Aims of the Cooperative Movement': As I understand it, there are basically two economic benefits to be obtained from co-operation. Firstly, the community is able to benefit from the advantages of large-scale production and marketing. Secondly, it does this in a manner which precludes exploitation of the workers or farmers by any individual or group of individuals, and at the same time allows consumers to gain direct service at the lowest cost. In other words, both the increased production which is possible from joint effort, and the prevention of exploitation, are central to co-operative enterprise: from this it follows that the more widely co-operation is spread, and the more aspects of the economy which it covers, the more benefit the members of any particular co-operative will receive from their efforts. (Nyerere 1973: 130) 161

Organisations Fig. 3.2. Cooperatives and communes: an explanatory scheme ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS 'total':

production exchange & consumption

a r g 1

0

j

f

marketing credit, &c. credit, technical needs

y

q

m --_x3

P xl-

'partial': consumption needs

0°

-L

/

d

low high DEGREE OF STATE MOBILISATION CASES (dates approximate) a Communism b State socialism c UK retail cooperatives, 1970 d Various disaster relief distribution groups (OXFAM 1980: sec 50-2) e Kibbutzim, Israel, 1960 (Cohen 1972) f Ejido, Mexico, 1960 (Wilkie 1971) g Hutterian colony, USA, 1965 (Bennett 1975) h Multi-purpose Coops, Comilla, E. Pakistan, 1965 (Badruddin 1972) i Ujamaa vijijini, Tanzania, 1970 (A. Ellman 1975) j Kolkhoz, USSR, 1930 (Wadekin 1975) k Moshav-ovdim, Israel, 1970 (Cohen 1972) 1 Moshav-shitufiyim, Israel, 1970 (Cohen 1972; Weintraub 1971) m Groupement Agricole d'Exploitation en Commun (GAEC), France, 1965 (Raup 1975) n Poland - Coop type 1,1950 (Galeski 1971) o Poland - Coop type II, 1950 (Galeski 1971) p Tennessee Valley Associated Cooperatives Inc., 1934 (Selznick 1949) q Sugar Coops, Maharashtra, India, 1963 (Baviskar 1971) r Olowo, Nigeria, 1957 (Barrett 1977; see Chapter 5 here) x Changes in Cooperative organisation in Senegal since 1910 (O'Brien 1975): xl - Societes de Provoyance (1910); x2 - membership made compulsory (1915); x3 - purchasing/marketing organisation extended (1933); x4 - voluntary membership restored (1947); x5 - Independence, state-sponsored 'Animation Rurale' Coops established (1960) y Growth of private credit/marketing coops in Senegal (1947-53)

162

Cooperatives and communes Nyerere sees the success of Cooperative enterprise as a delicate balance between the rationale of scale economies and the virtues of social equity. An efficient Cooperative brings more rational use of the factors of production, collective bargaining power in marketing, and credit facilities. By aggregation it provides power to the weak, a medium for eliciting and distributing government aid and advice, and an organisational base for health, welfare and educational functions. However, the combination of efficiency and equity is not intrinsic to Cooperative organisation, it is an ideal which is difficult to achieve and more difficult to sustain. It may therefore seem surprising that Nyerere should ascribe success not to simplicity but to comprehensiveness of Cooperative functions. The qualification we would add is that such success can rarely be achieved by processes internal to the Cooperative organisation, and in practice is guaranteed only by state intervention. Cooperative organisations are most usually distinguished in terms of their functions, and the increasing scope of their economic activities, indicated on the x-axis of Figure 3.2. Galeski (1975), for example, sees increasing degrees of 'complexity' extending from 'simple' Cooperatives catering for some technical or consumer need, through the credit and marketing societies so characteristic of the former British colonial territories, to small-farmer 'co-production' Cooperatives in countries like Poland and Yugoslavia, and eventually to the all-embracing Commune in which processes of production, as well as exchange and consumption, have been fully socialised. The most collectivistic units of all are the kibbutzim, where the principle of collectivism is extended to the rearing of children, the minimization of residential individualism, and - crucially - the minimization of personal property and the hiring of labour. Cooperatives proper do not even begin to approach this degree of socialization of common life . . . (Worsley 1971: 33)

One colonial official has described Cooperative development as an orderly accretion of functions, beginning with the provision of advice and simple technical inputs, proceeding to credit and only then to marketing facilities (Campbell 1951: 193). Few liberals would wish to proceed beyond these notions of mutual aid for individual gain towards various 'degrees of collectivization' (Worsley 1971: 21), which seem to require strenuous ideological motivation as well as a drastic re-ordering of the material bases of society. One of the principal architects of the kibbutz has declared that 'The kibbutz society lives and develops in accordance with material and productive aims on the one hand and ideological principles on the other hand' (Cohen 1972: 92). It is based on 'absolute equality between the members and can be contrasted with the principle of cooperation' - for example on the 'less collective' Moshav-ovdim. Tn the 163

Organisations commune the equality is in the distribution according to each member's needs, in the co-operative the equality is in the income for a day's labour' (op. cit.: 82). In the Moshav-ovdim, domestic units remain distinct, holding and working their land separately on lease from the Jewish National Fund. Even on the collectivised Moshav-shitufiyim 'each family has its own house and is responsible for its own cooking, laundry and child care'; 'The kibbutz commune is complete - embracing production and consumption' (op. cit.: 362, 288). The kibbutzim have played an important practical and ideological role in 'Socialist Zionism', settling and putting to productive use (with the aid of Jewish philanthropic capital) the arid land of Palestine. It seems remarkable that communal sentiments should have survived great increases in the scale of kibbutz organisation, the success of which is now measured in the extent of mechanisation and agro-industrial diversification. While kibbutzim accounted for 43% of the land farmed by Jews in 1970, it is important to note that they contained only 4% of the Jewish population of Israel (op. cit.: 7-8). Nevertheless, it is plain that 'The kibbutz is the result of planning, and its principles have been crystallized with great care and forethought' (op. cit.: 123). The fact that so many kibbutzim have strategic functions underscores the close connection between communalism and the state in Israel. Galeski (1975: 32ff.) and others have remarked that the degree of communalisation depends on the degree of state intervention - a pattern of covariance suggested in Figure 3.2. In China the commune, with its component production brigades and teams, became 'a vast, administratively rationalized collective unit which aimed at full integration of state and society' (Shillinglaw 1971: 154). State attitudes to Cooperatives in the mixed economies are inevitably more laissez faire, activities less tightly circumscribed and rates of membership much lower. Dealing with cooperative farming, Galeski makes a contrast between 'interactive' and 'directive' systems, the former more exposed to the 'punishment and reward' meted out by free markets, while the latter are subject to production targets set by the state and have no direct market relations; they are initiated and defined 'by the needs of the national economy and not by the particular goals or beliefs of [their] members' (Galeski 1975: 40). Here is an important key to the interpretation of 'success' in cooperative organisation: in the state-initiated Commune, 'success' is largely preordained, while in the mixed economies Cooperatives are usually obliged to compete with private enterprise. The latter depend on individual enthusiasm, while the Communes depend much more on the political zeal of the state. Wiles has remarked that 'a small co-operative' is an economic ideal type in Populist imagery (1969: 168) set against the predations of big business and mistrustful in its relations 164

Cooperatives and communes with the state. For these reasons it is vulnerable and, as Worsley remarks (1971: 30ff.), its growth and survival will depend on cooption by the state and on consequent changes in its economic and political organisation. State socialism is much more overt in its use of Communes as a political resource and as a means of funding growth. The soviet kolkhoz is a paradigm for this kind of intervention. While Lenin viewed the collectivisation of agriculture as a more gradual and voluntary development. Stalin took a draconian approach; between 1928 and 1935 rural people were forced into collective farming, the numerically dominant form of which was the kolkhoz. Although notionally voluntary, exit was strictly controlled, and the elected managers 'in practice could not deviate from the "recommendations" invariably given by district party and state authorities . .. The paramount duty of the kolkhoz-that is, of its management - was to fulfil production and delivery plans imposed by the state' (Wadekin 1975:101). Although ranking high on the scale of state mobilisation, production was less communal than on the kibbutz; kolkhozniks gained a substantial part of their subsistence from privately held plots, necessitated by the meagre levels of labour-day payments on the communal farm (Lewin 1980). The kolkhoz was a vital means for making the appropriations necessary for industrial growth, but there is no reason to suppose that its organisation was ever sustained by the ideological commitment of the kolkhozniks. Figure 3.2 is intended to indicate the divergence of state socialism and the communist ideal envisaged by Marx and Engels and expounded by enthusiasts like Bukharin and Preobrazhensky (1966), which would be located in the top, left-hand corner of the matrix. The transition to this ideal is notoriously vague in marxist dogma, somehow depending on the substitution of altruism for the power of the state. Experience to date certainly suggests that these two forces are incompatible in the organisation of communes: even in liberal America of the nineteenth century, collectivist movements repeatedly fell foul of political authority, and the notion of an independent, voluntary commune under state socialism is almost unthinkable. On the other hand, developing states with mixed economies have encountered major problems in attempting to mobilise Cooperatives. Although they do not extend to the socialisation of production, rhetoric gropes towards functional comprehensiveness: 'multi-purpose', 'integrated', etc. They are often intended to provide the basic social organisation for 'package projects' or settlement schemes, assuming control after the departure of project management. The failure rate of this kind of strategy is infamous. A Cooperative settlement scheme, Worsley remarks, is 'one of the most difficult operations one can conceive of (1971: 23). Both liberals and socialists seem to abominate the 'multifunc165

Organisations tional' Cooperatives which cluster around the centre of Figure 3.2, seeking either more limited and more clearly circumscribed functions (Campbell 1951: 175), or collectivisation with the full authority of the state. Most instances of Cooperative and Communal organisation seem to cluster around the diagonal line on Figure 3.2. However, it may be necessary to point out that specific institutions vary in the range of functions they comprehend, and the kinds of political constraint applied. Many countries have a range of Cooperatives and Communes, variously adapted to economic needs and geographical circumstances. Again, organisations change over time for political and economic reasons: thus the degree of communalisation in China has varied considerably since 1949 (see Gurley 1979; Shillinglaw 1971). The remarkable optimism which has sustained cooperative development during the course of this century seems to have two very general ideological bases. One is that cooperation is not only positive and progressive, but is also a 'natural' human propensity. This is not wholly consistent with the second general premise, that the ideal combination of efficiency and equity can be achieved only by the application of 'modern' (that is, bureaucratic) organisation. Worsley (1971) has warned of the myth of the naturally collective traditional society which pervades the lore of Cooperativism and Communalism. Marxists have been inspired by images of primitive communism, liberals by patterns of collaboration in tribal and peasant societies. Nyerere's efforts to blend the ideals of international socialism with images of the African extended family in his Ujamaa programme are a celebrated example of this. It is still commonly assumed that simple rural people have a latent capacity and enthusiasm for Cooperation, but lack the formal organisation to render this more efficient: The idea of Co-operation is latent in the minds of many people who have never heard of a legally registered society. There are plenty of places where people can be found who have been accustomed for ages to join together for the purpose of sowing, weeding or reaping crops, building houses, etc. Though their joint efforts are frequently followed by festivities of a more jovial and bibulous nature than cold and gloomy political economists would approve, they, nevertheless, contain the seed from which, with skilful guidance and encouragement, most satisfactory results can be produced. (Campbell 1951: 181)

Faith in the cooperative propensity continues to inspire development planners, against the testimony of protracted experience. Noting that cooperatives in Lesotho have enjoyed minimal support and 'little success', that country's remedial 'Blueprint for Action' in agriculture (1981b) insists that 'in spite of this lack of progress, the Government remains convinced that the Co-operative movement provides the best 166

Cooperatives and communes framework for rural self-help activities in Lesotho. It is committed to the promotion of voluntarily-supported Co-operatives which are firmly based on the traditions of village management of resources and collective exploitation of them. It believes that Co-operatives offer a practical means of giving power to the people . . . ' (Kingdom of Lesotho 1981b: 29). Success, the Blueprint insists, will be assured if local development institutions are 'founded on the strong traditions of communal activity and conform with the socio-cultural environment of the Lesotho village' (op. cit.:27). Anthropologists know that peasant collaboration is much less altruistic than is often supposed, and that production has rarely, if ever, been 'communal' in a sense comparable with the organisation of a kibbutz. A very common assumption is that the Commune is an extrapolation of the family farm. Cohen asserts that the kibbutz is . . . a wider form of society developed upon the principle that applies in the family farm, which is, of course, the original type of communal agricultural settlement. The devotion of the member of the family farm is well known, and in fact is a direct consequence of the principle of the family commune where equality prevails among all the members . . . The large communally owned farm, which is a collective of families, must base itself on the principle of the commune, which has proved its worth as an incentive for production on the family farm. (Cohen 1972: 290-1)

Such a pronouncement seems remarkably out of touch both with the realities of peasant agriculture and the reality of the kibbutz, which has come closer than any communal organisation in the twentieth century to the obliteration of the household as a productive and reproductive enterprise (see Spiro 1968). Elsewhere, household production is allowed to persist in socialised agriculture faute de mieux - for example on the soviet kolkhoz (Lewin 1980). Galeski evidently takes a contrary view of Cooperative and Communal organisation as a shift away from the patterns of 'traditional village life' (1975: 32). The persistent failure of state-sponsored Cooperatives does seem to point to the conclusion that such organisations differ from 'natural' cooperation not just in degree but in kind. The qualitative change is brought by bureaucratic formalism: regulations, managerial hierarchies, committee decision-making, paperwork, and so on. This is supposed to transform the natural cooperative propensity into efficient and equitable organisation. So strong is this notion, that proponents of Cooperativism commonly see the establishment of a rigid bureaucratic framework as, in itself, a manifestation of 'success'. It is less usual to recognise how alien these bureaucratic devices may be to the peasant Cooperator. Dore notes, for example, the 'institutionalised suspicion' implicit in formal auditing: in a community where trust is highly per167

Organisations sonalised, to be called to account publicly for the pennies which are invariably missing from society registers is a major trauma (1971: 52-7). For those who are not persuaded about the formal constraints under which village Cooperators must labour, it may be sufficient to list the records which societies at Comilla in Bangladesh are exhorted to maintain: Cash book, General ledger, Subsidiary ledgers: Share ledger, Savings ledger, Loan ledger, Irrigation ledger; Stock book, Membership register, Register of assets and properties, Receipt book, Register of receipt books, Pass books, Pass book register, Attendance register, Minute book, Inspection book, Notice book, Trial balance, Balance sheet, Profit and loss account, Guard file for receipts and vouchers, Loan plans, loan limits and loan requests, Audit report. (Badruddin 1972: 28)

The considerable formal education required to deal with this apparatus is one of many reasons why Cooperators are unlikely to be able to participate 'equally'. Egalitarianism in credit and marketing societies typical of the mixed economies is at best a facade, an early promise of mutual aid soon revealing differential capacities for individual gain. The tendency for Cooperatives to bring prosperity to those who are already well endowed is now a commonplace in development studies. The most dire foreboding is that successful Cooperators will start to dispossess their less adventurous fellows. Since the stimulation of entrepreneurship is a specific aim of many Cooperative movements, these tendencies are hardly surprising. Officials working in backward areas have long recognised that 'success' depends on the stimulation of new wants and the suppression of dissolute, redistributive styles of economising. On the strength of experience in the Punjab, Campbell has advocated the formation of 'Better Living Societies' to stimulate a desire for savings, investment and market involvement: 'The society can lay down a maximum scale of expenditure for every member or group of members or may prohibit certain forms of display altogether' (1951:183). Campbell is stern in his insistence that 'Co-operation is a form of business organisation, not a form of charity' but at the same time he insists that 'All the members of a credit society ought to be, roughly speaking, on the same social and economic level'. Wealthier farmers should be restrained and altruistic, confining their participation to investment, good counsel and friendly patronage (op. cit.: 68-9). In reality, big farmers are seldom so altruistic: in Uganda it was discovered that they led and used the credit facilities of village Cooperatives, but sold strategically on the open market - undermining society finances (Robertson 1978: 260-1). Officials everywhere tell tales of people who have manipulated Cooperative rules to their own advantage, by corruption, embezzlement or nepotism. It is they who are blamed for failure, not Cooperative organis168

Cooperatives and communes ation, and in a vicious spiral the antidote is sought in more detailed regulation and more 'professional' management. For the socialist, Cooperatives may be the capitalist wolf clad in egalitarian rhetoric, but equity in production and consumption remains an intractable problem in the organisation of Communes. Not only are there the difficulties of rewarding differential labour and satisfying differential needs (Galeski 1975: 31), but new forms of stratification tend to be introduced by the very machinery which seeks to prevent the old forms from emerging. Of the kolkhoz, Wadekin writes that 'Whereas formerly the "authorities" of state and party and the rural intelligentsia had largely resided in the central town or village of a district, they were now brought closer to the locus of agricultural production', creating conspicuous distinctions between rank-and-file kolkhozniks, farm managers, cadres, etc. (1975: 104; see also M. Ellman 1979: 92). Tough management of collective enterprise has become one of the hallmarks of state socialism, but in the mixed economies it usually leads to the speedy demise of Cooperatives. O'Brien (1975) describes the state takeover of sixteen Cooperative Unions in Senegal, on the grounds of managerial incompetence among the local people. Peasant resentment of the relatively affluent professional managers and of state milching of surplus value led them to protest 'we are the government's captives' (op. cit.: 138). The resulting withdrawal into subsistence farming and 'revolt against the groundnut' led to the collapse of the Cooperatives and, in turn, the decline of the Senegalese economy. It is understandably difficult to sustain voluntary participation in an institution whose most evident function appears to be the nourishment of a 'public sector bourgeoisie'. In developing countries, enthusiasm for cooperative organisation tends to wax and wane. Over a century, Bangladesh has seen at least half a dozen such cycles, and after the crises of the early 1970s officialdom seemed almost equally divided in its approval and disapproval. Those states which persist with Cooperatives and Communes may choose to regard them as transitional: means rather than ends, routes towards the perfected society rather than manifestations of it. For some, these efforts will ultimately become redundant with the advent of communism, when society itself becomes a 'huge co-operative commonwealth' (Bukharin & Preobrazhensky 1966: 77). Others are inspired by the reformist hope that Cooperatives will not only generate the free entrepreneurial agents of liberal society, but will instil social responsibility and sound democratic habits: Cooperatives, organized and managed by individuals with common purposes, are important components of participatory development programs. The strength of cooperative organizations lies in their ability to build on community level support and to provide a framework to mobilize democratic participation and build 169

Organisations broadly-based control of important socio-economic institutions. (USAID 1981: 166) Worsley has remarked that 'The co-operative is, in fact, in uneasy, eternal tension between both principles, individualism and altruism'(1971: 2). However, this is not a problem which is peculiar to Cooperatives and Communes, it is endemic to all social institutions. Ultimately, it may be this perverseness in human nature rather than deficiencies in imagination and organising zeal which frustrates government efforts. Political organisation: councils and committees

One of the most familiar manifestations of development in process is the committee, that ubiquitous group of responsible citizens and officials sitting around a table spread with books and papers. The committee is the political instrument of bureaucracy, so much a part of officialdom worldwide that it is now taken very much (perhaps too much) for granted. The planning process is sustained by a cavalcade of committees; meetings of the cabinet, the treasury, the planning unit, the project office and - of particular concern to us here - consultative and executive groups involving members of the public. Confronted with a decision-making task, the reflex response of the bureaucrat is to form a committee. It has become the standard mode of communication between officials and the people involved in settlement schemes, urban renewal projects, literacy campaigns or whatever. In the form of more established representative councils, it has become the characteristic means of linking the interests of ordinary people with those of the state and its agents. There can be no real development without organising committees', the Director of Bangladesh's Social Welfare Department assured the author in 1977. A chief in Ghana expressed the public point of view: 'before you can put your problems before the government it must make an organisation for you' (Robertson 1971:141). The need for a committee is prompted by recognition that unilateral action either by the people or by the state is seldom effective. In constructing a small arena for the political encounter, officials may be prompted mainly by a desire for control and propriety, and by the wish to share the responsibility for the success of a project with its beneficiaries. For such purposes existing local decision-making bodies may be regarded as inappropriate, 'too informal' or perhaps 'undemocratic'. Although initial contact may be made with a council of local dignitaries or an ad hoc public assembly, officials are usually anxious to 'put business on an efficient footing', perhaps by intruding someone who is literate to prepare agendas, advise on procedure and keep minutes. This transformation may continue until a fixed 170

Councils and committees venue for meetings is established and a regular timetable drawn up. At this point the downward delegation of authority which is the main distinguishing feature of the committee may be augmented with orderly patterns of public representation: the decision-making body is on its way to becoming established as a council, part of the fabric of the planning structure or of the local government hierarchy. Through its minutes or memoranda it is capable of communicating clearly and authoritatively with any other part of the state apparatus. Such, at least, is the ideal. From the perspective of the local people the new structures and procedures may appear alien and inhibiting, an extension of 'government' into their midst, a threat, but perhaps also a challenge and an opportunity. If the official sees the committee as a somewhat routine means, local people may regard it as an institutional end in itself: a piece of the state, a cluster of new roles, activities, resources and opportunities. If the official tends to regard it as a neutral node of communications and an executive device, local participants may perceive it much more as a political arena, and as an instrument which may be used either for or against their own interests. Thus, the operation of development committees can reveal with some clarity the conflict between technical and political attitudes, and the dilemma of bureaucratic efficiency and effective public participation. If the committee becomes a one-way medium of communication for transmitting directives to the people and cajoling them to execute decisions made elsewhere, the consequences are tediously predictable: the supposed representative capacities of the members disintegrate, their enthusiasm flags, and officials lament with paternal self-righteousness the incapacity of local people to cope with the modern world. However, occasionally the tables are turned: the committee is rapidly absorbed within local political arenas and its functions as a medium of communication with the state and its agents are impaired. The moral propriety with which officials regard 'modern committee procedure' can be contagious. People hitherto unfamiliar with this particular game may learn the rules with surprising speed, may outmanoeuvre the young and unsuspecting development official, and may establish a materially rewarding grip on government institutions. Government encouragement for village development committees in Ghana during the 1950s met with this kind of response. Official provision for these was almost incidental to the development of local government councils, and their formation depended on the initiative of local people. In many areas, public enthusiasm for village committees outstripped the managerial capacities of the less popular formal local authorities, and control was transferred first to the District and Regional Commissioners and ultimately to the cabinet in Accra (Robertson 1971). The immediacy of these development committees was highly valued: revenue raised in 171

Organisations the community was spent there, and in the absence of detailed official prescription the committees could do more or less what they liked. Street lights sprouted in small forest towns and grand public latrines were built. The great diversity of form and function made it virtually impossible to incorporate the committees into formal government structures. An example from western Ghana indicates the grandiose images which people had of these committees: reporting its formation to the DC in 1962, the committee of one tiny town designated its members Minister of Education, Minister of Finance, Minister of Transport and Communications, and so on.The DC was prompted to enquire: 'May I know if you are forming another government over there?' (Dunn & Robertson 1973: 310). Community councils tend to be omnifunctional, whereas in principle the committee depends on the allocation of specific rights and duties from above. Authority is delegated, but unless it is recognised by the people on whose behalf the committee acts, such authority may be meaningless. The central problem confronting new local councils and development committees is that their legal competence to perform an ambitious range of functions is not matched by their political competence. The official specifications of panchayati raj in India (Maddick 1970) or of the Basic Democracies in Pakistan (Mahmood 1964) can only be described as formidable, and their 'failure' can surely be attributed to the great gulf between bureaucratic ideal and political reality. The problem is only exacerbated by official insistence that such bodies, charged with the responsibilities of local and national development, should be apolitical: Since the inception of panchayati raj it has been widely held that 'politics' and 'panchayati raj' are antithetical terms. The former disrupts and divides, while the purpose of the latter is to construct and develop through consensus and unanimity' (Maddick 1970: 205) Village panchayats were established in India under the terms of the Independence constitution, and became the main political instrument of the Community Development Programme. They express the Gandhian enthusiasm for the organic Indian community, whose authentic decisionmaking and executive capacities were supposedly stripped away by British rule, thereby eliminating internal resources and progress and development. Critics of panchayati raj, who took a more individualistic view of India's citizens and who found the premise of inequality in village life morally unattractive, could take some comfort in the fact that the new bureaucratically specified councils had their roots not in India's social past but in the minds of western-educated lawyers and civil servants. Panchayati raj was, very assertively, a manifestation of 'democracy' (see Dube 1958: 17). For modern local councils and development com172

Councils and committees mittees in India and most other countries, this ideal implies a shift away from oligarchic conciliar structures towards constituency patterns of representation, a shift from what Bailey (1965) has described as the 'elite' type of council to the 'arena'. Left to its own devices, a community may produce as a development committee some shadow of the existing elite council of elders or local dignitaries. Accordingly, the conscientious development agent will probably pursue a more explicit prescription of the representative capacities of committee members: the community may be divided up demographically into wards or interest groups such as 'youth', 'farmers', 'traders' etc., each constituency providing its own spokesman for the committee. In many cases this formal segmentation of interests within the community is revolutionary. The dilemma of the Ghanaian Local Councillor in the 1950s is a case in point: as a citizen of one community he was expected to speak impartially in the council chamber for a ward including two or three adjacent communities which had been - by virtue of their very geographical proximity - at daggers drawn for decades. A new school allotted to one village was a betrayal of the other villages in the ward (Robertson 1976). It may be extremely difficult for a councillor to extricate himself from the bonds of kinship, friendship and neighbourly responsibility which hold a community together, and represent the interests of something so abstract as 'Ward C or 'local traders'. The role of 'Women Representatives' is particularly vexed. The notion of discrete 'Women's Interests' is ideologically fashionable, but notoriously vague and unreal in the context of the local community. There is little to be gained from designating women as a constituency if their representation is reduced to a single committee member and if this narrow definition of their interests disenfranchises them in other ways. One or two women closeted in the council chamber with ten or fifteen men are likely to feel inhibited. Behaviour is inevitably cued to generalised notions of female roles, and the woman is treated and behaves as a passive member of the group. It is therefore not surprising that 'Women Representatives' on development committees tend to absent themselves from meetings or to take refuge in the community centre kitchen where they are frequently to be found preparing refreshments for their male colleagues (Robertson 1976: 189). As Bailey (1965) has pointed out, the democratic 'arena' type of council tends to behave quite differently from the oligarchic 'elite' council, in which business is controlled by an internal hierarchy, perhaps of elders and a chief, or Company Chairman and Board of Directors. All enduring decision-making bodies are governed by procedural rules, but in the bureaucratically engendered arena council these have a high degree of specificity and formality, as a glance at any set of Standing Orders will confirm. Rules are, of course, two-sided: on the one hand they constrain 173

Organisations participation but on the other they provide instruments with which the politically adroit may play. At times, the formidable framework of regulations can obliterate the expression of interests and sentiments, and reduce councillors to bewildered or frustrated silence. Different countries have elaborated their own codes, but the one which derives from English parliamentary conduct and was disseminated under the aegis of imperial expansion has considerable prevalence, if not notoriety. Precise regulation usually extends to demarcation of the spatial and temporal boundaries of meetings: they are scheduled at and sometimes between precise hours; the venue is fixed and the validity of business may depend on its being transacted within these particular walls rather than in a private house or local bar. Such devices as the quorum or the guillotine serve to control movements across these boundaries. Councillors may be constrained from straying out and (typical of the committee principle) outsiders may be constrained from straying in. Such arrangements may be in sharp contrast to more relaxed modes of decision-making prevailing in a village or small town, where meetings are held in the open air, where groups are continually splintering off to argue or to consolidate opinions, and where business begins with the arrival of the first handful of people and continues until the last handful are too tired to talk. In such community councils, freedom of speech is usually highly valued. At meetings one may talk as long and as often as one wishes, and during the course of discussion new issues of all sorts may be raised. Decisions emanate from discussion, being shaped and reshaped by argument; in bureaucratically formalised committees, the procedure is largely reversed: motions are tabled in advance, argument may be limited by rules such as that specifying that participants may speak no more than three times to a motion, decisions are reached by the majority vote, and are duly inscribed in the minutes. The development agent may have great difficulty in persuading local people to operate within the strictures of such an arena. Attempting to expound or elaborate the rules while business is actually being transacted may help him to promote his own interests, but is unlikely to gain him allies. Participation may be weakened, decisions premature and poorly understood, and executive capacities accordingly impaired. The zealous official who may be able to produce impeccable minutes for transmission to higher authority may have sacrificed the committee's capacity to transform words into deeds. The bond between the people and the state fashioned by the development committee is therefore very fragile, dependent not on the technical subtlety of organisational and procedural norms but on real political competition. The symbolism of the council or committee can be very powerful: the imposing council chamber, the decorous white tablecloths, the national flag, the chairman's gavel and carafe, the solemn bulk of the 174

The mass media and education minutes book. Local people may readily be persuaded that this elaborate and pompous game is an inevitable, indeed proper part of their relationship with the state. The history of such institutions is dogged with frustration and failure, and their persistence is one of the many puzzling dimensions of the question why planned development is still pursued. The remarkable perseverance of both parties in this encounter may well be inspired by the knowledge that there is no other preferable medium through which the largely material benefits of development may be negotiated. Organising ideas: the mass media and education

Planned development, like so many other processes in modern life, depends on the techniques of mass communication which have expanded and proliferated so dramatically since the Second World War. The media have become vital to the implementation of plans, but they have also served to shape and disseminate the fundamental ideas and ideals of national development. The communications theorist Marshall McLuhan is celebrated for his insistence on the intrinsic importance of the mass media, beyond the messages which they convey; they have altered our perception of the world and our response to it, and have placed new powers at our disposal. In its most enthusiastic form, 'McLuhanism' looks to the positive value of universalised communications: electronic media may serve to transpose the moral community of the village to the global level, promoting a sense of brotherhood and good-neighbourly relations. Today, a more pessimistic view of the powers of the media seems to prevail: they lend themselves to the monopoly of small privileged groups, and have become an adjunct of state power without noticeably improving generalised social welfare. Mass communications are decidedly unilateral, and their deployment in national development underscores the generally one-sided relationship between the state and the people in planning processes. During the 1960s the estimated number of radio receivers in Africa rose from 300,000 to 12 millions. During the 1970s there was a worldwide increase of similar proportions in the number of television receivers. This boom has masked the importance of the continued growth of publishing, of postal services, and of the international telephone and telegraph network (mankind's largest single instrument). The importance of the electronic media is emphasised by the fact that they demand no special aptitudes or education. However, this does not seem to have diminished the authority of the written word - an earlier communications revolution whose influence has been extensively discussed (see for example Goody & Watt 1968). This is indicated in the attitudes of Malaysian villagers: 175

Organisations The radio as a source of information is thought of as being less authoritative than the written word . . . Something seen or read in a newspaper or magazine is, almost by definition, factual truth and certainly beyond question by villagers' (Wilson 1967: 54). Literacy and numeracy remain the foundations of all formal education and of bureaucracy; their association with the expansion and consolidation of state power is well known, as is the ultimate association of scripture with divinity. The growth of the mass media has increased the centripetal tendencies of state power. The 'dawn broadcast' is now a reflex response for the perpetrators of coups d'etat (see Kirk-Greene 1981) and a reliable radio or television network is, for many countries, at least as important as a reliable police force or army. Its cost can readily be justified in terms of national integration and its use as an instrument of development. The distribution of receivers is often regarded as an index of prosperity, and loose equations are made between a well-informed public and the practice of democracy. The falseness of this is suggested by the fact that all governments, but particularly those preoccupied with the centralisation of power, are very much more enthusiastic about licensing receivers than transmitters. (The UK government has recently yielded to pressure for free access to a 'Citizens' Band' - a development seen by many in authority as consonant with anarchy.) The political imbalance in mass communications merits closer study. In very simple terms, two individuals, each transmitting and receiving messages, have the fullest opportunities for balanced conversation. Of course, external factors such as social status may inhibit the participation of one party or the other. The more people join in, the more likely it is that two-way communication will degenerate into meaningless noise. As teachers and politicians know well, coherent communication in larger groups depends on the imposition of order and the focussing of the attention of listeners on a single speaker. As the congregation increases, so the opportunity for each individual to speak diminishes. In face-to-face gatherings individuals may seize the speaker's role, perhaps by heckling, but again the larger the group the less practicable this becomes. Deprived of a transmitter, the electronic listener has no opportunity for riposte at all. These two contexts of communication, the conversational dyad and the mass audience, may also be distinguished socio-linguistically. Two communicators, particularly if they know each other well, may be able to take much for granted; they will tend to communicate in a 'restricted code', to use Basil Bernstein's term (1967). Much is not said but left implicit, and much is predictable. The conversation of a married couple at the breakfast table may be a case in point. By contrast, the speaker addressing a large audience can take much less for granted. Although such devices as the political slogan may use a 'restricted code' to reinforce 176

The mass media and education a sense of community, the communication of information to a large audience usually depends on an 'elaborated code', involving a more precise choice of words, a greater degree of explicitness: 'Here verbal planning, unlike the case of a restricted code, promotes a higher level of syntactic organization and lexical selection' (Bernstein 1967: 128). Communication is easier if the audience can be judged to be relatively homogeneous in interest, knowledge, and linguistic competence. In most Third World countries such homogeneity cannot safely be presumed, although it remains one of the principal goals towards which development of the media is directed. Proper development of the media has become a central feature of democratic idealism, notably the liberal variants: it is a key to the 'open society' and to the achievement of social consensus. Plato had a very precise understanding of the relationship between the scale of communication and the limits of democracy: the political community should not exceed 5,040, the largest number of people an orator could address conveniently. The ruse of political representation has vastly extended the compass of this 'true' democracy (see Dunn 1979), and the resources of mass communications have extended it even further. In the process, the capacity of the average British Member of Parliament to articulate the interests of ninety thousand constituents has not greatly improved. Recently there have been some efforts to liberalise the media by increasing the flow of communication from the public towards transmitting centres, mainly by connecting telephone and broadcasting networks. Although this has been used so far mainly to provide entertainment, it goes some small way towards the 'emancipatory' use of media envisaged by Hans Magnus Enzensberger: in its ideal form each receiver will also transmit, individuals will inter-communicate, programmes will be decentralised and production will be collective; the system will permit true mobilisation of the masses and political learning. One does not have to be etatist to deduce that this is more likely to achieve anarchy than socialism, and noise rather than coherent messages. Nevertheless, Enzensberger's complaint that contemporary use of the media is generally politically 'repressive' carries much force (v. Enzensberger 1970). In earlier liberal thinking, expansion of the media was seen unequivocally as beneficial. The cinema, radio and television diffused modernising ideas and by largely subliminal processes helped to universalise social values, foster an entrepreneurial spirit, and provide images of a wider world which would liberate the peasant psyche from the strictures of 'traditionalism' (see Rogers 1969; Lerner 1958). The lack of 'shared symbols', most obviously a common language, did not deter developing countries from committing resources and effort to the expansion of broadcasting networks in the 1950s and 1960s. Much concerned with the 177

Organisations promotion of national integration, Uganda Radio broadcast in 1966 in fifteen languages through two channels to three geographical regions. This tended to fragment programmes into short vernacular sequences, interspersed with longer English language broadcasts, but certainly provided a very direct means of conveying news and information on current affairs. From an early stage, the use of the media to instruct was reckoned to depend on their capacity to entertain. A paradigm for this has been 'The Archers', a dramatised radio serial introduced by the BBC as part of an effort to reorganise agricultural production in Britain after the Second World War. Mixing advice about fertilisers or livestock diseases with the saga of a rural community, the programme became immensely popular, particularly among town-dwellers, and as entertainment it has long outlived its instructional purposes. 'The Archers' has influenced styles of extension broadcasting in many countries, capitalising on the empathy which listeners may feel with Dan or Doris Archer, or their local counterparts. It has been discovered that if programmes are not to be treated simply as entertainment, the messages must be reinforced by other means: by printed materials, the formation of radio clubs, or visits from extension officers. The Community Development Programme in India made extensive use of a wide range of devices, from films and broadcasts to touring concert parties and demonstrations (Dube 1958: 102ff.). In the process, it was discovered that without intensive reinforcement in face-to-face discussion, information was largely wasted (see Mathur & Neurath 1959): effective learning depended on a transformation of the mass form of communication into the conversational idiom. The costs of this can be heavy, as the experience of the relatively successful Ghana Rural Broadcasting Unit testifies. Formed in the early 1960s to promote development among farmers and fishermen, the project used 'multi-media' approaches including the circulation of pamphlets and the formation of 'Rural Forums' of around twenty-five members which reported regularly to the production team (see Dodds 1972: 11-15). Certainly, the notion that radio and television are a cheap substitute for schools, colleges and universities has been dispelled by a number of disastrous experiments such as the attempt to establish primary school education by television in Niger. However, the mass media remain a very attractive resource for the modern state in performing one of its essential tasks: educating the people. According to Ernest Gellner, literacy and formal education have become the keys to citizenship: 'Modern loyalties are centred on political units whose boundaries are defined by the language . . . of an educational system' (1964: 163). With the growth of the modern state, education has become increasingly detached from the informal setting of home, community and workplace. Liberals and 178

The mass media and education socialists would both regard this as inevitable and even necessary. It has become the task of the state to ensure that its people are equipped with the skills necessary for corporate and for individual advancement, and thus educational and manpower programmes have become a vital part of national development plans. A persistent difficulty is that the returns on investment are usually long delayed, and that manpower needs in a fastchanging world cannot be foreseen with great accuracy. An intensively planned education system will restrict both social and individual choice, but laissez faire approaches are notorious for producing citizens whose qualifications bear little relation to available and socially necessary employment. A frequent criticism of educational systems in the Third World is that they are ill-adapted to national needs. They are established on EuroAmerican models, serve extraneous interests, and have little bearing on indigenous history and culture. In 1967, Julius Nyerere made the characteristic criticism of schools in colonial Tanganyika: they served the interests not of the people but of the colonial state, equipping it with junior officials and clerks (Nyerere 1967). In Tanzania and elsewhere the search for a more authentic pattern has been less than successful; the traditions of pre-industrial societies may help to reinforce new national identities but they have so far contributed little to doctrines of economic growth. The quest for authenticity is largely a gesture of frustration against the international pedagogy, and its inefficiency and inequity. Educational systems in Third World countries have been indicted for overemphasising tertiary and secondary levels, for directing able students away from agriculture and into urban underemployment (see Lipton 1977: 259), for perpetuating irrelevant curricula, and for schooling the few at the expense of the majority. While criticism of education and the use of mass media emanating from the developed countries centres on class bias and intra-national bias, criticism from the Third World (the voice, it might be said, of educated elites) has concentrated on international factors such as the persistence of imperialism and dependent underdevelopment. State control of the media, and the class interests which supposedly inhere, are lively issues in countries like France and the UK (see for example Emmett 1972; Glasgow University Media Group 1980), but seem to be taken very much for granted in developing countries. While the right of the state to control the media is seldom questioned, the bombardment of information from the developed countries has become the object of intense criticism. The non-aligned states have pressed, particularly through UNESCO, for a New World Information Order to parallel the New International Economic Order. The central issue has been the supply of news to domestic newspapers and broadcasting media. It has been estimated that 90% 179

Organisations of news is supplied by the five major agencies: Associated Press (USA), Reuters (UK), United Press International (USA), Agence France Presse, and Tass (USSR). Between them, these agencies collect information from, and distribute it to, every country in the world through some 48,000 offices (Righter 1978: 49). Time and space are no problem: UPI can transmit 'fast news' intercontinentally at the rate of 9,600 words a minute. Very few countries today do not have some form of external broadcasting, and inevitably the developed countries have the largest and most influential systems. The BBC broadcasts in thirty-nine languages twenty-four hours a day and the Voice of America broadcasts in thirtyfive languages through 123 stations to an estimated 25 million listeners daily: The volume of international broadcasting doubled between 1950 and 1960, and doubled again in the next decade; by 1972, there were 1,365 shortwave broadcasting transmitters' (op. cit.: 216). In an early move towards the New World Information Order, a symposium was convened at Tunis in March 1976. While it sought 'emancipation' from the media hegemony of the developed countries it also insisted on 'firm national (governmental) control of the information system . . . as one of the bases for the exercise of national sovereignty'. The indictment of 'domination in information' accused the 'big press transnationals' of 'systematically distorting the facts about non-aligned countries by the use of the press for retaliation and political penetration'. This was seen as contradicting 'authentic cultural values', as being 'always contrary to the interests of sovereign independence', and 'a fundamental cog in the great wheel of domination' (Righter 1978: 107). The Tunis meeting resolved that: Every developing country has the right to exercise full sovereignty over information, both that concerning its day-to-day realities and that diffused to its people. It also has the right to be informed objectively about outside events and the right to publicise widely its national reality. (Quoted in Righter 1978: 108)

Apart from a few pieties about 'information as a social good, in the service of development' (ibid.), the etatist tone of these pronouncements makes little connection with populist appeals for 'cultural action for freedom' (Freire 1972), or 'deschooling society' (Illich 1971). Third World states have no interest in abolishing schools, or disinventing the mass media, or wishing them to degenerate into a Babel of vernacular noise. On the contrary, they are concerned to bring these vital resources more firmly under state control; they do not wish to withdraw from the 'global village' but to acquire a more authoritative voice within it. The mass media have played a central role in universalising ideas and values over the last thirty years, and have certainly done much to consolidate institutions of national development planning. We have yet to see 180

The mass media and education whether more balanced communication among rich and poor states will diversify or transform ideas of progress, or will simply give new strength to old orthodoxies.

181

4 Contradictions

Having focussed so far on the planning activities of the state, we now turn to the planning activities of ordinary people. Official planning now looms so large that we seem to have lost sight of the fact that ordinary people everywhere plan, to assure the continuity of their lives as well as to achieve social change. We consider how this may contradict the developmental intentions of the state, and how a zeal for reform may ultimately find expression in political and social revolution. In the developmental contest between people and state the allegiance of social scientists is very much in question. Development planners and social scientists have both sought a resolution of this dilemma within the loose political and ideological framework of populism. We explore the deficiencies of this, and of official doctrines of socialism and liberalism, arguing for the need to rediscover a more speculative social science with a proper moral concern for the substance of alternative ideal worlds.

Introduction

The notion that the capacity to plan is peculiar to modern man is one of those partial truths which have become part of the cant of the contemporary study and practice of development. A theory that people in literate, industrialised societies have a greater need and capacity for planning has hardened into a dogma that particular kinds of planning are proper and necessary; that they are the responsibility of particular groups of people; and that people in non-industrial societies, or at the margins of industrial societies, do not, cannot - and maybe should not - plan their own individual and collective welfare. The idea that people outside modern industrial society do not plan is a myth, an unproven assertion which is as prevalent in socialist as in liberal social theory. To a Russian social scientist, 'spontaneous processes are typical for the earlier stage of development of society, while consciously regulated processes are typical for a socialist society'. Social planning only becomes feasible with that degree of 'central consciousness' con182

Introduction ferred by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism (Ferge 1978: 75). For the liberal social scientist in the west, the capacity to plan is presumed to be an index of Modernisation: 'We rated as more modern the man oriented toward long-term planning, both in public affairs and in his personal life' (Inkeles & Smith 1964: 22). In this chapter we shall argue that these views are the product of a very narrow understanding of the meaning of planning which has gained currency during the course of this century. It is an interpretation which sees development planning as the legitimate task of civil authority, of the modern state, and regards any other kind of planning as residual, or as a disruptive challenge to civil authority. The fact that such views are embedded in contemporary social science is an issue to which we shall devote some critical attention. In this chapter we shall stand on its head the assumption that planning is something which modern people usually do, and which people in nonindustrial societies rarely do. In particular, we shall portray national development planning as a peculiar, twentieth-century variant of a much more generalised human activity. People have planned their collective welfare long before the emergence of nation states, and a return to these antecedents may help us to put the modern variant intelligibly in its place. The capacity to speculate on how collective welfare may be sustained and improved is not peculiar to modern man, or to social scientists, or to contemporary governments. Even where fatalism seems most deeply rooted there are ideal Worlds which serve as a basis for evaluating the present and assessing the future. The problem for national development is that official definitions of progress do not always coincide with images of better worlds which so persistently well up from the subject population. It may be fruitful to interpret many of the frustrations of development efforts as a collision between two saliently different kinds of planning, with discrete interests and purposes, rather than as a collision between schemes for progress and the inertia of the people. Throughout this book we have been concerned to explain how and why national development planning has become so distinctive. It has become institutionalised to a point at which its practitioners have largely lost sight of its peculiarities, but at the same time, the techniques and interests of the professionals have become progressively more distant from the layman's understanding. The converse is no less true: official understanding of popular development ideas is diminishing. The practical consequences of this may be profound. Development efforts commonly proceed from a presumption of consensus, of shared interests and understandings of what progress is about. In reality, development is transacted on the basis of fragmentary understandings and mutual incomprehension. We are forced to the conclusion that nobody has a comprehensive and pellucid knowledge of what the processes and purposes of national planning actually are. 183

Contradictions Too often planning degenerates into a uncomfortable dialectic: the people versus the state. Each side may attempt to pursue its own vision of progress by the ameliorative process of reform. To prevail against the state is revolution; but revolutions make new states, and states make reforms. The strong state represents itself as the best of all possible Ideal Worlds, and disavows all imitations. We might say that the modern state has appropriated 'progress', 'development' and 'welfare', just as it has monopolised most of the means by which these ideals may be pursued. It has also coopted social science. In so doing it has placed a high value on technical capacities but remains very suspicious of any kind of moral or political speculation, Utopian images which may linger insidiously in the intellectual fabric of social science. It is salutary to reflect that, before the advent of the industrial revolution, the nation state and social science, Utopian speculation was the mainspring of social philosophy, an analytical mode from which the modern disciplines of economics, sociology and political science have developed. In the two rival ideological and theoretical traditions which divide the world today, marxism and liberal functionalism, images of alternative Ideal Worlds have no respectable place. Our enthusiasm for a value-free social science has given us one which is now morally depleted, irresponsible, and a most unpromising source of inspiration in confronting a bleak future. The more assiduously we attempt to apply social science, the more the gaps between theory and practice become evident. They will be closed not by making social science more technical; the only remedy is a return to a critical, speculative, moral interest in the future of mankind. Meanwhile, the contest between the state and the people in the name of progress is on. In the process, a pattern of political attitudes and interests has emerged which has not a great deal to do with stoutly asserted ideologies of liberalism or socialism. It is pragmatic, it expresses a desire on the part of both the people and the state for a happier and more productive interrelationship. It is nationalistic, it appeals to the spirit of community, to simple and natural virtues; it expresses anxiety about industrialism and the ravages of change, but it is committed to the idea of prosperity and growth. This awkward, ambivalent pattern of beliefs has become firmly associated with the contemporary institution of national development planning, and has been given the label Populism, partly in recognition of its antecedents in earlier social movements. As one would expect, it is profoundly reformist in intention, and very unsympathetic to revolutionary upheaval. Ideologically eclectic, it can be, and has been, accommodated by almost any regime. With political pragmatism at its heart it has the added advantage in national development efforts of being almost entirely without a vision of the future. 184

People as planners People as planners

If we regard planning quite simply as the formulation of ideas about desired future states and their attainment, then it is plain that the modern state is still a long way from acquiring a complete monopoly. Ordinary people plan in a wide variety of ways for many different purposes. Consciously or otherwise, we as individuals plan our daily lives, making decisions in advance about how we should behave and what we should do. Some of this planning concerns immediate tasks like cooking a meal, some relates to more distant enterprises like family holidays or a change in career. People who do not plan either depend aimlessly on the organising capacity of others, or become socially derelict. As the exercise of human rationality, this activity is doubtless vital to the survival and advancement of the species and may be the subjct of biological and psychological study. Beyond the level of the individual, planning is a social and political activity, a set of transactions involving the welfare of people cooperating in groups. The more people there are involved in any activity, the greater the need for some predetermined course of action. Much of this 'planning' is evidently carried along by routine and, apart from a few pragmatic decisions, may not impinge much on the consciousness of the actors. A conscious plan becomes more evident when new activities are embarked upon: some forethought and coordination will be essential if the project is not to degenerate into disorder. The effectiveness of the plan will certainly depend on how coherently and realistically means are related to ends, but it will also depend on how thoroughly the participants are resolved upon it. The greater the assurance of concerted action, the less uncertain the future becomes; if unanimity is lacking, means and ends very soon become detached. If we compare workmen digging a ditch, two families planning a wedding, and a government drawing up the annual budget, it is clear that planning differs in its degree of explicitness, the extent of departure from routine, the scale of the activity, the number of people involved and the amount of political negotiation required to relate ideas to actions. On these counts, national development planning may be judged 'more difficult', but it would probably be a mistake to assume that its processes are more 'rational' and less 'routinised' than, for example, the planning of a village harvest festival. Indeed, it seems that the kind of planning which deals with routine, the daily round, may be the most difficult to discern; there comes a point where conscious planning dissolves into that broader pattern of expectations and values which we call 'normative systems' or 'culture' - the grand plans of social life. However, it would be rash to pre185

Contradictions elude these more sublime levels of planning from our conspectus, for several important reasons. Firstly, 'culture' or 'value systems' are commonly seen as distinct from, if not opposed to, national development planning. Although in liberal circles it is becoming more fashionable to see culture as a creative resource in development, it is still more generally seen as an obstacle, a fatalistic and reactionary force with an authoritative grip on the ideas and actions of ordinary folk. At best it is the inert raw material for modernisation. The political task is to persuade people to trade the security of tried and tested routine for new strategies of wealth and welfare. The contrast between culture and development planning is false and misleading mainly because it is based on an assumption that 'tradition', or culture, is inimical to change, and a parallel assumption that change, particularly that envisaged in planned development, is preferable to not changing. Culture is certainly an inherently conservative force, providing people with assurances about how they and others ought to behave, but no culture is inert and passive, and no value system is so closed as to preclude completely normative innovation. If culture is a grand plan it is dynamic and creative, and it is this - not its supposed quiescence - which makes it such a tough rival for development policies and programmes. Finally, in times of crisis culture can become a very explicit political force, a policy and programme for ethnic movements, or an ideological basis for different kinds of nationalism, nativism or 'traditionalism'. Underlying the false dichotomy between 'tradition' and planned development is a complex misunderstanding of the relationship between continuity and change. It is important to recognise that whereas everyone plans, not everyone is preoccupied with development. Individually and collectively we are obliged to devote much thought and energy to sustaining a routine, to try to keep things more or less the way they are. Generally speaking, we have to plan much more for continuity than for change, and it is this creative concern for maintenance which is often mistaken for inertia by officials whose task is to bring progress to the people. It seems that modern man has a bias towards the expectation of change and a dread of routine; this bias certainly pervades social science, right and left. Barrington Moore has complained of this 'assumption of inertia, that cultural and social continuity do not require explanation'; this, he remarks, 'obliterates the fact that both have to be recreated anew in each generation, often with great pain and suffering' (1967: 486). Anthropologists are much more familiar with these 'processes reinforcing the stability' of social life (Shanin 1972: 3), an interest which may underlie their conservative reputation among social scientists. However, while others are more committed to hurrying along historical change, it may be as well that some are still concerned with the dynamics of routine. It is at least an antidote 186

People as planners to the notion that national development planning works on a passive society, and may even help to explain how planning has neglected the maintenance of social welfare in its more exciting quest for 'development'. To a large extent, therefore, modern development efforts bring about a collision between two kinds of planning: the popular concern for continuity and the official concern for change. As James Scott (1976) and many others have remarked, peasants will often go to great lengths to maintain an ostensibly miserable way of life, reckoning that the essentially political effort of change will be materially too costly. In development efforts, past experience weighs heavily against future promise, and new social formulae are usually judged sternly in terms of whether the effort required to maintain the existing pattern is, on balance, worthwhile. To the development planner the choice would appear to be between poverty and inertia on the one hand, and reasonable prospects of prosperity on the other. In closer focus: although a peasant may be unable to explain his farm plans with the same finesse as the Department of Agriculture can theirs, his husbandry is very much a matter of strategy, a persistently changing set of conscious calculations about needs and resources. This active concern for continuity in no way precludes an interest in 'development'. If mankind were devoid of notions of amelioration and progress it would be difficult to explain the world as we know it today. We have tended to see ordinary people as the objects of development, responding to the intrusive processes of industrialisation and the market economy, and to the dramatically increased scale of social relations. Such people 'are developed' or adapt 'spontaneously' to change. This somewhat patronising view gives little credit to popular understandings of and interests in 'development'. If we consider the extent and pace of change in the world today we must acknowledge that the need for concerted, inventive responses still falls overwhelmingly on ordinary citizens, not on development officials. As social scientists we have devoted attention copiously to official projects, but we remain largely ignorant of the innumerable schemes by which ordinary people seek to come to terms with an unsatisfactory present or an unpromising future. Having devoted little specific attention to the successes and failures of these projects, we have sacrificed the opportunity to learn from them. In contrast to official efforts, major popular projects are often described, somewhat disparagingly, as 'spontaneous' - as though planning had no part to play. An example would be the incursion of a hundred thousand people into the forest land of southern Uganda in the 1950s, involving a kind and degree of coordination unknown even on the largest government resettlement schemes. Within a short period the area became the main supplier of 187

Contradictions foodstuffs to Uganda's cities, and a major source of export revenue from cotton and coffee. All this was achieved despite the extreme heterogeneity of the population, and to suggest that it was all a happy accident, or the collective fulfilment of individual greed, or even the working out of some sublime social process, does no justice to the intelligence and conscious efforts of the people involved (see Robertson 1978). Scarlett Epstein's study of two Indian villages (1962) celebrates this contrast between 'planned' and 'spontaneous' development, and leaves no doubt about the capacity of ordinary people to arrange radical changes in their material and social circumstances. Very similar in the early decades of this century, the development of the two villages diverged after 1939 when a government irrigation scheme for sugar and rice was established at Wangala. The people of neighbouring Dalena, which was too high for irrigation, responded to the increasing prosperity of the area by developing themselves. While 'Wangala's social system . . . changed only slightly because irrigation strengthened the traditional farming economy . . . Dalena's social system changed radically, because the diversification of its economy changed economic roles and relations within the village' (op. cit.: 10). The political impetus in Dalena came from a vigorous 'progressive' faction, and the expansion of trade, processing and services brought the village into much more extensive involvement in the economy of the region than Wangala, which stagnated in spite of its enhanced prosperity. Recent studies of Third World cities yield many examples of the popular capacity for collective, innovative action. Again it is plain that urban development has been very largely in the hands of ordinary people although their poverty has often prevented them from constructing the salubrious physical environment favoured by professional planners. Much of the architecture and most of the social organisation of cities have little to do with government initiatives. New and often elaborate associations have been formed to provide economic, political and social building blocks for the new society (Banton 1957; Little 1965). Where there is extensive immigration ethnic identity inevitably plays a major role in these associations, but religion, occupation and recreation may provide the initial basis for co-activity. Fund-raising, banking and credit are recurrent features of such associations, whose evident success invites comparison with the cooperative societies organised by the state in the interests of planned development. Clifford Geertz has drawn attention to the ubiquitous rotating credit association, whose members collect and disburse money according to need, or by lottery; this he sees as a 'middle rung' on the development ladder, a bridge between the communitarian economy and individual entrepreneurship, a means of finding some col188

People as planners lective security and a device for raising capital, as well as for providing access to desired consumer goods (Geertz 1966). It is significant that such 'informal' organisations should so often be disparaged by officialdom: they are untidy, have an uneasy relationship with the law, and stand in the way of 'proper' cooperatives, councils and other development organisations (see Campbell 1951: 90-1). The developmental efforts of ordinary people fall, almost by definition, into the 'informal sector', that shady world discovered by social scientists and planners in the 1970s which has proved so difficult to accommodate within the formal proprieties of national development. Closer study has made the salience of these popular initiatives more apparent (see Bromley 1979; Moser 1979). For people confronted by a capricious and unaccommodating 'formal' economy, 'informal' organisations have vital strategic functions. By contrast the prescriptions of officialdom may offer mediocre prospects for survival; the pragmatic planning of ordinary people presents a sharp contrast to the dogmatic planning of the state. Trades unions provide a striking example of the conflict between popular and official interests in 'development' organisation. Third World cities have a proliferation of 'informal' occupational associations, ranging from long-established craft guilds to cartels of car washers and nightwatchmen. These serve to regulate prices and incomes, terms of employment, 'pitches', and so on, as well as providing social security and welfare functions. By contrast, officially sponsored trades unions have had a blighted existence. Many were established under the aegis of colonial governments to help 'stabilise' and develop the labour force as well as to provide a coherent basis for collective bargaining. They have either fizzled out, become the mouthpiece of an acquiescent labour aristocracy, or have acquired a popular momentum which has guaranteed their suppression by the state. 'Spontaneous' trades unions are viewed officially with deep suspicion and yet official cooptation and legitimation can be the most effective kiss of death. Those union officials who have spent most of their lives in gaol know how intolerant a new developing state can be of popular conceptions of industrial relations. Scepticism about the capacity of ordinary people to plan development may extend to doubts that they have any coherent understanding of the meaning of the word 'development' itself. Some progress has recently been made towards interpreting popular perceptions of national planning (see Wallman 1977), but very little attention has been paid to indigenous, or 'folk' understandings of 'development', ideas which do not share the same historical roots as those prevalent western images discussed in this book. J.D.Y. Peel has written a pioneering essay on the history and semantics of
Contradictions heart, Qlaju is concerned with 'enlightenment' and knowledge, the manipulation of these, and their relation to political and economic power. Qlaju is a reflection on the political and economic marginality of Yoruba communities, incorporating the sentiment that useful knowledge is largely exotic in origin. The expansion of trade and European influence in West Africa brought a need for a broader and more strategic kind of knowledge; with Christian proselytism this became associated with formal education and religion, adding the gloss that Qlaju was something not to hoard, but to disseminate. Later in the colonial and in the postcolonial era, Qlaju became the war-cry of the educated and politically ambitious, and was turned against those 'traditional' chiefs who had been involved in the processes of Indirect Rule. According to Peel, Qlaju is more a technical than a moral notion, and is certainly dynamic: 'It proceeds from a desire to understand the conditions of individual and communal success . . . Changes in its concrete referents have been governed by specific historical changes in those conditions' (Peel 1978: 159). Qlaju illustrates the way in which social values incorporate images and guidelines for change, as well as for continuity, and the way in which these images are themselves responsive to change. It may be that indigenous notions of development - like our own - commonly reflect on that fundamental schism between the pursuit of individual gain and the need for social solidarity. As such they are most explicitly evoked in political process, in the competition of individual and collective interests and the moderation of social conflict. This is evident in the twin notions of aggrandisement and unity in the Akan-speaking societies of southern Ghana. Nkoso and kroye are persistently evoked in political discussion; the former asserts the importance of material and political progress both in the context of individual advancement and the prosperity of communities. Kroye insists that this can be secured only within an overarching unity, a political confederation. Political and economic strategy is construed as an interplay of these and other related ideas. Semantically, nkoso and kroye have their roots far beyond the colonial era, but they have readily incorporated changing criteria of progress and welfare. As adaptable as Qlaju, nkoso now extends to such amenities as electric street lights and new local councils, while kroye recognises the salience of electoral districts and incorporation within the modern Ghanaian state (see Dunn & Robertson 1973: lOff.). Study of these 'indigenous' ideas gives little support to the view that popular responses to development are mechanical, uncritical or uncreative. Challenged to justify his own understanding of development, the planning official might protest that it is better informed, better adjusted to the modern world, and advised by scientific rationality. He might regard some of the ways in which a peasant farmer comes to grips 190

Social movements and Utopian images with an uncertain future as 'magical', in sharp contrast to his own methods and prognoses. However, it seems important to recognise some of the similarities of the two approaches. In Chapter 2 we have drawn attention to some weaknesses in the scientific techniques of planning, and we should recognise that the concern with an inherently capricious future makes all kinds of planning seem 'mystical' at times. Practitioners of the fallible art of national planning are often described as 'wizards' (Hanson 1968: 25) or 'magicians' (Meynaud 1964: 146), but sometimes this steps beyond the bounds of mere metaphor: Hanson observes that Guzarilal Nanda, Deputy Chairman and effective head of the Indian Planning Commission from 1953 to 1963, was noted for his 'respect for sadhus and habit of consulting astrologers' which 'did not enhance his influence among his better educated and more secular associates' (1968: 47). Perhaps Mr Nanda's unorthodoxy as a planner made him more acceptable and intelligible to the mass of the Indian population. It is not simply the mysteriousness of some aspects of planning which suggests parallels with primitive magic. Magic itself, according to anthropologists, is less 'mysterious' to its practitioners than westerners commonly suppose. The early students of magic, Frazer and Malinowski, were agreed that it was usually prosaically technical in performance, and better seen on a continuum with science than as a kind of religion. 'Like other arts and crafts, it is also governed by a theory, by a system of principles which dictate the manner in which the act has to be performed in order to be effective' (Malinowski 1954: 86). The Trobriand Island farmer may therefore be forgiven if he is unable to discriminate very clearly between the efficacy of his own garden magic and the advice of the Agricultural Extension officer. The difference is between one kind of technique and another, not between primitive religion and scientific rationality. As technical processes, both magic and science lend themselves to the more routine aspects of organising future outcomes, to piecemeal and practical changes in the lives of individuals and social groups. Neither science nor magic has a part to play in those more drastic revolutionary changes which punctuate history (v. Wilson 1973: 493). However, both are important in more gradual processes of reform, and in the hands of the powerful they are palliative devices, means for holding at bay disruptive social and political forces. In the guise of a social science of development planning, they do much to sustain the modern state. Social movements and Utopian images Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave A paradise for a sect; the savage too 191

Contradictions From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep Guesses at heaven . . . (John Keats, The Fall of Hyperion, lines 1-4)

In the last section we have drawn attention to the value of social continuity, implicit in social norms and therefore largely tacit, but very often explicitly stated. We have also drawn attention to the interest which ordinary people have in social change, expressed in ideas of piecemeal improvement and in more pervasive images of a better world. We shall now examine these ameliorative and transformative images more closely, and consider the kinds of constraint which prevent them from being realised. It is plain that social movements for change are mainly inhibited by the countervailing ideology and political power of the state. Disaffected people may seek reform painstakingly within the rubric of an existing regime. This is politics, constitutional and restrained, the reformist strategy of a Robert Owen. Stubborn rulers may have to be challenged more directly by an act of rebellion. The purpose of this may be as much to reassert the proprieties of an existing political order as to threaten or dismiss particular leaders (v. Gluckman 1959). It has often been remarked that even the liveliest demagogue will be unable to persuade people to rebel if they do not themselves feel that such action is, on balance, worthwhile. The populace at large does not rebel for fun'; most men 'rebel as a final gesture of misery, not as an expression of optimism about the future' (Dunn 1972: 246). Even when it comes, rebellion may be a remarkably low-key affair, a patient effort at restitution. The Hammonds' account of the Labourers' Revolt in early nineteenthcentury England is an example of those many rural uprisings in which the overall restraint of the people appears in retrospect more remarkable than the outbursts of violence (Hammond & Hammond 1978). Peasants have often rebelled against a landlord class only to re-establish what they regard as their rights (Scott 1976: 179ff.). Where there is an avenue of escape it may prove an alternative to rebellion: disaffected people have migrated to new lands or have withdrawn to construct their own sectarian ideal world, often under conditions of great hardship, beyond the reach of political authority. If rebellion is an act of protest against a regime, revolution is the overthrow of that regime, the transformation first of political structure and then of social structure. The revolutionary crisis arises from correspondingly deep fissures in society, and is directed in the first instance against an incapacitated and discredited regime: 'There can be no revolutions, however abortive, except where the previous regime, whether by its weakness or its own viciousness, has lost the right to rule' (Dunn 1972: 192

Social movements and Utopian images 246). Any leader can press for reform at any time without menacing authority, and rebellions do not in themselves oust a regime, but without profound structural crisis no revolutionary scheme can succeed. Revolutions are notoriously difficult to analyse, with their complex structural causes and transformative effects, their broad social and political scale, and perhaps also because they are infrequent, by definition irregular, and subversive of those very intellectual categories which we may wish to bring to bear upon them. While the pace of revolution is often too rapid for the comprehension either of actors or observers, in retrospect it may be very difficult to decide precisely when it began and when it ended, and which group of actors was most influential when. However instantaneous it may appear, it seems instructive to regard revolution not as an event but as a process, which may be protracted and in which 'differently situated and motivated groups have become participants in complex unfoldings of multiple conflicts' (Skocpol 1979: 17). Revolutions arise out of discontent, an expression of the deepening schisms in society. They proceed, albeit fleetingly, to the act of rebellion; when that fails to deliver the desired reform, opposition and structural crisis deepen until eventually, and perhaps with great rapidity, the political order is overthrown. At this stage the social order too may be in disarray, shattered but not yet renewed, and a protracted and often painful process of social reconstruction is inevitable. It is at this stage that reform and revolution converge, reminding us that in the long run the two processes are complementary and interdependent. 'Reform is not an alternative to revolution', Lasky has warned. 'Reconstruction can be both militant and minimal. Revolution is not an alternative to reform; even the most fundamental and violent of blows is part of a slow moving pattern of social change and rearrangement' (1976: 592). As Hobsbawm and others have argued, it is important in examining social movements to understand their reformist or revolutionary intentions: 'The point of this distinction is that reformist and revolutionary movements will naturally tend to behave differently, and to develop different organization, strategy, tactics, &c.' (Hobsbawm 1959: 11). A fundamental difference is whether people believe they have, within the rubric of an existing political order, the power to improve their lot, or whether they feel that power must be sought outside the existing regime. Reform proceeds from the assumption that the power to change is already legitimately in hand: it does not have to await a structural crisis, amelioration can begin now. The reformist is concerned with making: his ideal world is more immediate, contiguous with present circumstances, and more communitarian in its concerns, whereas the revolutionary's images of transformation look to the grander levels of society, and to breaking the power of the state. He is preoccupied with the means by which the 193

Contradictions structural crisis will be precipitated: his plan is a plan of campaign rather than a plan of social reconstruction. An intricate vision of the new social order in all its communitarian detail is not of immediate interest, because the revolution will effect its own grand transformation, and everything else will fall into place. This belief recurs in the millennial assumptions of many revolutionary movements and explains why, after the crisis, revolutionaries may be poorly equipped for the ensuing process of social reconstruction, lacking coherent and realisable images of the new society. Revolutionary movements are typically concerned with the repudiation and overthrow of the ancien regime, with the destruction of property and people and the abdication of existing powers, spiritual and temporal. Their enthusiasm extends to physical violence, and is expressed in recurring symbols of reversal and annulment - blood, fire, nakedness, death and rebirth (v. Manuel & Manuel 1979: 182; Lasky 1976: 474ff.). However, both revolutionary and reformist movements have a common denominator in their dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and in their attempts to visualise a better world. They differ most markedly in the means by which this transformation will be effected. It seems reasonable to suppose that Utopian speculation is most rife in times of social and political discontent, but it also seems unlikely that the images of a more agreeable world on which social movements draw are always created de novo for the period of crisis. Every culture embodies counterfactual images of a happier, more companionable, and more rewarding way of life - optimistic ideas which have surely been indispensable to human progress. The fact that we cannot recognise them in our own terms as a 'plan' is to miss their significance. Speculation about the future is not confined to literate societies which have produced the classic Utopias; it finds expression in myth and folklore, the interpretation of dreams, in representations of history and cosmology, and in that omnibus category 'religious belief. One reason why their prospective images may not always be apparent to us is because past, present and future tend to become fused into a single pattern of normative statements. How we are today is explained by interpretations - often very fanciful to the outsider - of how we were yesterday, and what we ought to be tomorrow. It is important to stress that these ameliorative ideas, no matter how fantastic they may appear, have the immediate function of criticism and analysis. In a very diffuse way, they amount to a folk social science. More radical Utopian images, reflecting social discontent, emphasise this tendency: they are 'an effort at reconstruction in the sense that they begin at the point where a political and social critique is called for' (Bastide 1966: 476). As moral speculation, Utopias are concerned with that age-old dialectic between freedom and constraint, the satisfaction of individual and communal needs, greed and equity, self-fulfilment and social pro194

Social movements and Utopian images gress. They are evoked not only by internal crises and disaffection, but by new opportunities presented by the intrusion of the market economy, colonial domination, the advent of industrialism and the expansion of capitalism. Images of these new forces are often incorporated in speculation on a transformed world; some of this speculation in literate western cultures has taken the form of 'dystopia', Swiftian inversions of the existing order to indicate its deficiencies and the need for corrective action. Constructive Utopias proceed beyond the level of criticism to specification of social organisation and basic institutions which are either reformed or transformed versions of those perceived in the real world. Utopias are concerned above all with power, believing that it 'cannot be allowed to run wild; it must be comprehended and controlled' (Burridge 1969: 172). To ensure the material and spiritual welfare of the people it must be channelled into new welfare-maximising social organisations. Perceiving the need for political integrity, Utopias incline towards 'totalitarianism', albeit of a benign kind. They are usually broad in their imaginative compass: although there may be a central preoccupation with, for example, the abolition of private property, the ramifying implications of this are traced into new styles of family organisation, architecture, political institutions, etc. As we shall see later, there are curious parallels between these Utopian images of life 'in the round', and the analytical images of structural-functional anthropology. Utopian speculation is fundamentally concerned with the nature of time, with rationalising past and present, and seeking to come to intellectual grips with the future. The social movements which it inspires are likewise preoccupied with time and its manipulation. They differ in their views of how long it may take to achieve the desired order: for the reformist, progress may be a slow and piecemeal affair, while the revolutionary has in mind a swift and definitive change. The scheduling of the millennium is very problematic, dependent as it is on structural crises largely beyond the control of individuals. The need either for studied vagueness or the persistent rationalisation of failure certainly makes an impression on the organisation of movements: Wilson reports that Christadelphianism in England anticipates an earthly millennium but has become very staid and institutionalised in its patient expectation of this event (1973: 318). Other Christian millenarian movements in our midst, for example the Jehovah's Witnesses, are more conspicuous because of their urgent belief in the imminence of Judgment Day. A curious feature of Utopia is its timelessness: in the ideal world, the ravages of time will be overcome along with every other vice. Revolutionary movements are notorious for instituting their own calendars marking the advent of a new epoch, and teleology implies a conclusion of history itself. 'In communist society', the Manifesto stoutly avers, 'the present dominates the past' (Marx & Engels 195

Contradictions 1967: 98). In some conceptions, the millennium is a retrieval of an ideal world lost in the past; nativist movements like the Ghost Dance of the Plains Indians in nineteenth-century America are obvious examples (see Mooney 1965). It has been argued that the teleology of Utopia is greatly influenced by cultural and cognitive factors, which in turn predispose some people to reformism and others to revolution. The latter arguably depends on a very singular and linear view of history, of the kind associated with Judeo-Christian patterns of belief, and Islam (Cohn 1957: 307). The profoundly cyclical, regenerative view of time inherent in Hindu philosophy has been held accountable for the absence both of millenarian and of revolutionary impulses in India (Worsley 1957: 224). From this it could be argued that the notion of social transformation, rather than piecemeal amelioration, is in itself a revolutionary idea beyond the compass of conventional Hindu cognition (see Bastide 1966: 474). If the ideal world is beyond the ravages of time it is also, in curious ways, spatially isolated. Finley has observed that the word which Thomas More gave us has a playful ambiguity: is it ow-topia , 'nowhere', or ew-topia, an 'ideal place'? The word suggests that Utopia is both inaccessible and yet a place which we may reasonably aspire to inhabit: 'Utopia transcends the given social reality; it is not transcendental in a metaphysical sense' (Finley 1975: 181). Its function in social movements is as a bridging notion, a link between unsatisfactory reality and a desirable future: 'The great Utopia startles and yet is recognised as conceivable' (Manuel & Manuel 1979: 29). Thomas More symbolised this in the isthmus which joined the realm of King Utopus to the wider world, and the monarch's desire to sever this link. This recurring theme of insularity and conjunction, of dangerous journeys and lost voyagers, intimates the connection, however fragile and attenuated, between this world and a better one. It is also a reminder of the fact that the ideal world is so only by virtue of a contrast with the real world. Utopia created: reformist movements

Social scientists have for long debated whether the prime function of Utopian speculation is social construction or merely palliation. Lewis Mumford argued that the Utopia of escape 'leaves the world the way it is', while the Utopia of reconstruction 'seeks to change it so that one may have intercourse with it on one's own terms' (1923: 15). Others, like Bastide (1966: 476), have argued that all Utopias are in some degree concerned with both escape and reconstruction, in that they reject an existing order and, in varying ways, seek to improve upon it. This is certainly true of the small reclusive sects which, in their hundreds, dot the historical landscape. For them, the social organisation of paradise has been a real and 196

Reformist movements urgent task, and the process of withdrawal from the real social and political world is a necessary precondition for the very purposive construction of an ideal world of their own. As we shall see, the attempt to escape from superordinate political authority is fraught with hazards, rather than 'escapist' in the usual sense of that word. The revolutionary path may be no less fraught, but it is very much less concerned with the communitarian detail of a new way of life; such matters, it is assumed, will fall into place when the millennium arrives. Like the children of devout Christians, revolutionaries are not encouraged to speculate on what daily life in paradise will really be like. The sectarian reformist movement seems to proceed from the assumption that if we can disengage ourselves sufficiently from temporal powers we can acquire the power to change ourselves. The scale of our operations is our own community, not the state and society at large; if we have wider ambitions we may hope that we will influence by example rather than by revolutionary action. 'Olowo', the Nigerian heaven on stilts described by Stanley Barrett (1977), provides an illuminating account of a modern Utopian plan in action, of the complex interplay between spiritual and material forces, and of the need to construe any social movement as a process. Perhaps better known by its real name, Aiyetoro, Olowo was founded in 1947 by a group of Yoruba fishermen of the llaje state on the Nigerian coast not far from Lagos. Isolated from terra firma by many miles of swamp, the 'Holy Apostles' built a remarkably successful community on wooden piles. Olowo must be seen against a background of Christian sectarianism in the region, dating back to the nineteenth century. Olowo was a reaction to the social, political and economic hegemony of Ugbo, an llaje statelet, and was precipitated by a doctrinal dispute about the practice of killing twins at birth. In a pattern of rebellion and withdrawal typical of such movements, several families retreated to the swamps to construct their New Jerusalem under the leadership of their own 'Oba', a dynamic and innovative man who claimed divine powers. After this initial act of severance, it is significant that the Apostles' first heroic undertaking was the digging of a seven-mile canal to the mainland; this link was essential to the growth of the community but it also helped to assure the ultimate demise of Olowo. Within a few years, a combination of spiritual fervour and concerted physical effort established a thriving entrepreneurial community. Very profitable fishing and passenger traffic enterprises were developed, and by its heyday in 1957 Olowo was building and maintaining its own vessels, had an excellent technical training school, and was diversifying into other activities, notably shoe manufacture. The Apostles, now more than 1,000, maintained an austere communal lifestyle but enjoyed enviable educational, health and other 197

Contradictions facilities. Although it owed nothing to the initiative of the Nigerian state, Olowo came to be regarded as a paradigm for community development. Barrett insists that Olowo was not just a freak of religious mania: 'it was planned with great deliberation, and pursued with single-minded determination' (1977: 125). Success depended on a powerful creed, oligarchic control, the visionary constructivism of the first Oba, and devout attention to material advancement. The Oba believed that 'Jesus was a man of action, not a theorist' and that 'it was meaningless to sit around discussing what constituted a life holy. Instead they had to make holy life by their own concrete actions (op. cit.: 47). 'Policy thrusts' were provided by the Oba's interpretation of his own and other people's dreams, which might be construed as pragmatic responses to the unfolding reality of the community. Although much of the organisation was very conventional (schools, clinics, boy scouts, the Red Cross) it was decidedly totalitarian in its insistence on individual subjection to the commune and to the Oba. 'Four Pillars' (leading prophets) were immediately responsible to him, and he was advised by a Supreme Council of about thirty elders. Below this level there was an assortment of line leaders, landlords and landladies; women were excluded from all but this humble level of authority. By the gift of 'spirit photography' the Oba could scrutinise the Apostles' souls and extract confessions of antisocial sentiment and behaviour, for which the principal remedy was hard labour. Individual needs and capacities were constrained by a rigorous communalism in production and consumption, a major advantage of which was, according to Barrett, 'to make labour and capital available to a central administrator who could direct them to specific economic ends' (op. cit.: 83). As such, 'development did not occur haphazardly. Instead, the economy was rigorously planned. It was the leaders who did the planning, and who directed the people to work on the projects they had selected' (op. cit.: 98). While the community established its material base, spiritual activity was surprisingly low-key, but after the first Oba's death priorities changed under the direction of his successor. In three traumatic years there was a spiritual revival which severely threatened the material welfare of Olowo. The second Oba was duly ousted and a third established a strong secularist trend, averring that 'the only purpose of the church [is] to make people behave' (op. cit.: 56). The Apostles shrugged: 'New Oba - New Plan' (op. cit.: 197); but it is clear that this policy shift only accelerated the decline of the community. Near the heart of the crisis of the second Oba's regime was the troublesome premise that Olowo was Paradise, 'a land of happiness and plenty, where there would be neither darkness nor death' (op. cit.: 45). While material progress and spiritual conviction lent this some credibility, the 198

Reformist movements notion that Olowo was secure from the ravages of time was insidiously false. Corpses were disposed of secretly at night, and to evince grief was a major sin. Possibly more disruptive of moral and material welfare was the second Oba's decision to abolish marriage (a policy abrogated by the third). Having found an apparently successful formula for production, Olowo had discovered the recurring problem of Utopian communes: an incapacity to organise the processes of reproduction. Within the ideological framework of a perfect and timeless world, social processes, with their biological and material mainsprings, are a persistent erosive force. The life-cycle of birth, procreation and death is firmly rooted in familial relationships, which are in turn dynamically involved in the perpetuation of the community and society at large. For the Utopian commune it is a subversive internal force and a major threat to its fragile and often ambivalent relationships with the wider world. The harmonious bond between individual and community is menaced by the family, that nexus of growth and sexuality, with its vacillating needs and capacities which so disrupt efforts to maintain social equity. As Mumford points out, the family tends to be a rival Utopia: 'A limited community of goods, a tendency to adjust one's actions to the welfare of the little whole, and a habit of banding together against the world at large . . . the little Utopia of the family is the enemy - indeed the principal enemy - of the beloved community. This fact is notorious'(1923: 49-50). The social organisation of 'real' communities does not simply accommodate family dynamism: it is, some anthropologists would insist, predicated upon it (see Fortes 1958). In 'spontaneous' land settlement of the kind which took place in southern Uganda it was a key to community growth and consolidation (Robertson 1978: 73ff.), while in the case of FLDA settlement schemes in Malaysia (see Chapter 5) the cycle of family growth proved seriously disruptive: as in Olowo, an intricate plan for economic production was jeopardised by the relentless processes of social reproduction. Similar problems have afflicted the development of agricultural communes in the socialist states: commenting on the persistence of the 'peasant family economy' in the USSR, Basile Kerblay has pointed out that 'until the collective economy is able to take over the function fulfilled by the family farm, the objective reasons for its survival remain' (1980: 80). Recent reversals in China are a further indication of the apparent incapacity of 'the collective economy' to displace domestic processes doubtless because their importance and complexity is still far beyond the range of the most diligent and sophisticated economic planning. Confronted with these problems, reformist movements have variously sought to abolish, reintegrate or reinvent the family. More than any other innovation these measures have come to characterise the moral dissociation of communes from the wider world. Even the efforts of the Israeli 199

Contradictions kibbutz to dissolve out the family into wider communal processes have been viewed with scepticism, perhaps because marriage takes on a rather furtive quality reminiscent of mortuary arrangements in Olowo. Some literary Utopias revel in the abolition of the family and the institutionalisation of promiscuity, but one does not have to be an anthropologist to know that this is an unpromising basis for effective production and reproduction. The fact that these problems loom so large in communal organisation warrants some fairly detailed comment here. Some very sober Utopian ventures have taken the drastic step of abolishing marriage, the family and sexuality altogether - a policy which is as improbable a basis for survival as free love. A case in point is the Harmony Society in Pennsylvania, one of the numerous reformist movements established in America during the nineteenth century. The Harmony Society arose from social and economic disaffection in early nineteenth-century Germany, and was precipitated by a particular act of rebellion against the potent church in Wurttemberg. Persecution of George Rapp and his followers only added momentum to the movement, and eventually some three hundred dissidents pooled their resources to migrate to America - the new frontier for the disaffected and dispossessed. They bought 5,000 acres of 'wild land' about twenty-five miles from Pittsburg and, with their collective property held in trust by 'Father Rapp', the expanding commune made economic progress comparable to that of Olowo, establishing a sawmill, tannery, market garden and even a distillery producing whiskey 'of which, however, they always used very sparingly themselves' (Nordhoff 1966: 72). Soon after they had secured this material base, however, there was a remarkable spiritual revival: the community was resolved to end married life, to produce no more children, and to stop smoking ('a deprivation which these Germans must have felt almost as severely as the abandonment of conjugal joys' (op. cit.: 74)). As a predictable consequence the community had shrunk from around 800 members in its heyday to a little over 100 mainly older people at the time of Nordhoff s visit in 1870. Although very much a reformist movement, Harmony was deeply influenced by a somewhat awkward commitment to the Christian millennium. This they believed to be imminent (hence their assumption that reproduction would take care of itself), being persuaded that the most pressing task was the preparation of souls for immortality. They idealised Adam, the whole, asexual man, assigning to woman responsibility for the fall of man and for disruptive sexuality. The community was organised into Households, consisting of even numbers of men and women. Individual and communal restraint was highly valued, their style of worship being much more sedate than other, contemporaneous movements in America. As a programme for reform, Harmony revealed a very effective 200

Reformist movements fusion of spiritual zeal and economic skill but (to borrow the language of national development) their prospective plan proved sadly imperfect, predicated not on their own efforts but on the millennial transformation of the world. The Oneida Perfectionists were no less successful materially, but were advised by a very different creed. Believing that the second coming of Christ had already occurred, unnoticed, in AD 70, and that since then the way had been cleared for the perfection of earthly life, they established a progressive community in central New York in 1848, under the leadership of John Humphrey Noyes. They sought every modern initiative, and established highly successful industrial enterprises ranging from milling and canning to saddlery and upholstery. An enthusiasm for science was evident in their attitudes to education, management and diet, and to sexuality and reproduction. Noyes admired the work of Galton and Darwin and invented 'stirpiculture' - 'a concerted effort to select those couples whose spiritual and physical qualities most fitted them to reproduce. Members of the community signed an agreement to abide by the decision of a committee as to who should conceive the stirpicults, and between 1869 and 1879 fifty-eight children were born at Oneida' (Lockwood 1965: 409-10). This was sustained within a system of 'complex marriage' which distinguished 'amative' and 'propagative' intercourse and which, although a form of polygamy, was precociously and explicitly directed to the emancipation of women. Needless to say, to the public eye Oneida's innovations were scandalous. It seems that any reformist movement which hopes to remain in public favour, or seeks to influence by example, must restrain its innovative zeal and sustain some very conventional moral properties. It may have been largely for this reason that Robert Owen's Cooperative movement was very wary of sectarian communalism. Thus G.J. Holyoake, staunch chronicler of the Owenite movement, gave short shrift to William Hodson, some forty years after the latter had set up his community at Manea Fen in Cambridgeshire: The projector, Mr Hodgson [sic], was a handsome and lusty farmer, who heard from clerical adversaries that a community might serve harem as well as public purposes; as he had some land, a little money, and plausibility of address, he turned out as a peripatetic orator in favour of beginning the new world in his native fens of Cambridgeshire. No one suspected his object. . . (Holyoake 1908: 182)

Other writers have been kinder to Hodson, pointing out that he in fact achieved a rapprochement with Owen and that innuendos seem to have derived from the legalistic sin of having married his deceased wife's sister (Armytagel961: 145ff.). Barrett remarks that the Utopian community which survives a single 201

Contradictions generation has enjoyed exceptional success (1977: 205). As the founding sectarians age, both physical capacity and spiritual fervour can be very hard to sustain. Material success in itself tends to 'undermine the values that separate the Utopia from the outside world' (op. cit.: 54). In a rapidly changing world the sect may be unable to sustain enhanced spiritual, social or material welfare; notwithstanding the prosperity of Oneida most of the stirpicults chose to merge individually with the brave new world of twentieth-century American society. 'Primitive reformist movements', Hobsbawm has remarked, 'are easily lost in modern society' (1959: 60). From 1970 onwards Olowo fell victim to a growing individualism: communal production and consumption broke down, yielding to differential rewards, wage labour, the sale of goods, and eventually to the deterioration of the schools, workshops, clinic and other facilities. The community showed signs of becoming 'a replica of any of the dozens of poor villages that surrounded it' (op. cit.: 148). It seems that Olowo was undermined not only by its material success but by its growth and by an insidious reintegration with the wider world from which it had sought to escape. In its heyday Olowo was sufficiently small to allow the Oba to read the soul of every Apostle and nip dissiderice and deviance in the bud (Barrett notes that leaders 'did not hesitate to flog people who disobeyed them' (1977: 98-9)). However, like so many other reformist movements, Olowo had no coherent programme for its own reproduction and growth; a notable and durable exception are the Hutterites of the USA and Canada who have established a process of segmentation which rigorously limits the growth of each 'colony' to about 100 people, and federates them to one of the 'Leute' in the manner of tribal structure. The Hutterites have also worked hard to avoid a revolutionary demeanour, the threat that their growth may appear to challenge political authority or society at large (Bennett 1975). The leaders of Olowo were less restrained: inspired by their success they sought to extend their influence into the whole of Ilaje, and to this end tried to form alliances with neighbouring communities. The latter proved to be more interested in sharing Olowo's material progress than in the promise of a new spiritual and political hegemony, and the expansionist policy not only failed, it further undermined the reformist programme in Olowo itself. The later experiences of Olowo reveal the contrast between visions and strategies of communitarian reform on the one hand, and expansionist strategies of social transformation on the other. The Apostles had no communicable revolutionary vision to offer the masses of Ilaje, nor did they have the organisation to mobilise them. Perhaps more important, neither Ilaje nor Nigeria were structurally predisposed to a revolution emanating from Olowo. Nevertheless, Nigerian officials were very interested in the success of this venture, which seemed to provide an 202

Reformist movements inspiration for national community development efforts. The fact that they admired but could not transplant Olowo further exemplifies the discontinuity between popular reformist projects and those initiated by the state, of which Nigeria has as large a catalogue of failures as any other country. This dilemma becomes more starkly evident if we examine the parallels between Olowo and the small settlement project at Dimptu, which was regarded as one of the showpieces in Ethiopia's community development efforts before the revolution of 1974. One of the poorest countries in the world, Ethiopia was notorious for its 'feudal' structure, its evident lack of national solidarity, and its political incapacity to organise and sustain planned development (v. Markakis 1974). From 1957 onwards the state assembled four consecutive national plans, but none of them provided an effective basis for development. They did help to draw attention to Ethiopia's poverty, and the urgent need for investment in growth. In the early 1970s, after the ravages of drought and famine, there were many hundreds of small development projects throughout the country, organised by a remarkable range of international agencies, many of them private philanthropic organisations with very limited resources. These might be regarded as 'aid fiefdoms', licensed and patronised in varying ways by the state. One of these was the settlement project at Dimptu, set up by the Lutheran evangelical church in Ethiopia, Mekane Jesus. Like most similar ventures it had a low budget, high idealism sustained by its Swedish missionary manager, and a degree of geographical and political isolation. The Ethiopian Ministry of Lands had reserved 'provisionally' for the scheme 4,000 hectares in an area occupied by semi-nomadic Nilotic peoples. By 1974, an ethnically mixed community of 115 households was established, and growing rapidly. With its emphasis on small-scale technology, its sensitivity to 'traditional' social organisation, its bold interethnic approach, and its modest but promising material progress, Dimptu was widely regarded, like Olowo, as a model for progress. However, like Olowo, its further development was threatened by its own progress and by the necessity for increasing interaction with the wider Ethiopian polity. The manager lamented that he was now obliged to spend large amounts of time in regional and national capitals trying to negotiate permanent leases and secure political cooperation, at the expense of the attention which he had been able to devote hitherto to his flock. After several inspired years of spiritual, social and material progress, Dimptu was confronted with the inertia and incapacity of the Ethiopian state, on which so many other projects had foundered. As the case of the much larger Swedish-funded project CADU has made clear (v. p. 131), political integration posed the principal threat to survival. 203

Contradictions It seems that a thousand Dimptus could not transform Ethiopia; only a painful and protracted process of revolution against the deeply-rooted 'feudal' hierarchy will be likely to achieve change. People in many different countries, committed to reformist projects like Dimptu, often aspire to a quiet 'revolution from below'. Anthropologists with a liberal enthusiasm for development seem particularly susceptible to the belief that small-scale projects with firm popular participation can snowball, and have large-scale transformative consequences. Such expectations are inspired more by optimism than a realistic appraisal of prospects and an understanding of the drastic failure rate of popular reformist projects in the modern world. Utopia pursued: revolutionary movements

The revolutionary movement has its roots in the crumbling fabric of an ancien regime: the deeper the fissures the firmer its purchase and the more leverage it can exert. Concerned with precipitating the structural crisis, revolutionaries operate on a much grander scale than communitarian reformists, and are much more at the mercy of historical contingencies. They have an urgent need for an efficient plan of campaign and are less concerned with the detailed fabric of a future ideal world. They are societal rather than communitarian in their concerns, expansionary rather than restrictive in their recruitment, dealing with broad categories or classes of people rather than with individual persons. They need to make parties and councils of war, not churches and villages. Like the reformist movements, they depend on passion and zeal, but put it to very different uses; rather than channelling the power of collective action into controlled and restrained organisation, revolutionaries seek to develop and release it in its full emotive force. Interest and identity must be focussed on a truly societal scale. Collective opposition makes explicit the fissures which will eventually cause society to fall apart; it makes the rejection of an immoral, amoral or oppressive 'other', and a 'superordinate ideology' practicable (Worsley 1957: 226). The task of articulating these collective sentiments and interests usually falls on a leader or prophet. It may be helpful to discriminate these two roles, the leader being more concerned with organising actions, the prophet with organising ideas: 'A prophet is he or she who organises the new assumptions and articulates them; who is listened to and found acceptable; whose revelation is accorded authority for however brief a period. But the prophet cannot identify himself with the community as it is: he identifies himself with an image of what it might or should be' (Burridge 1969:14). If the prophet may be distanced from the movement, a semi-mythical hero or messiah, the leader is directly involved, devising 204

Revolutionary movements the organisation on which the progress of the movement depends and translating prophecy into a programme of action. Leadership, passion and organisation often meet in apparently 'religious' movements, but as we have been repeatedly warned, this should not be mistaken for ineffectual primitivism or narrowness of function and intent (see Hobsbawm 1959: 66; Bastide 1966: 469). The success of a revolutionary movement undoubtedly depends on the extent to which it can mobilise and organise fervour, but without a coherent plan of campaign addressed to major flaws in social and political structure it will assuredly fail - no matter how keen the sense of injustice, how vigorous its Utopian images, or how rapid the expansion of the movement. A tragic case in point is the 'Ghost Dance' movement among the Plains Indians of America in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (see Mooney 1965). It extended to tribes as far afield as North Dakota and Southern California, and was a quite concerted response to the political and territorial predations of the expanding white population and the consequent impoverishment of the Indians. The main prophet Wovoka was, like many revolutionary messiahs, a marginal man, a Paiute orphan brought up by a white rancher. For some years millenarian movements anticipating the restoration of the buffalo herds, the return of the ancestors and the disappearance of the whites had gained ground among the Paiute, and Wovoka's vision of a regenerated Earth followed this pattern. As a manifesto his dream was quite specific, urging the Indians to abandon war, learn to live at peace with the whites, and prepare themselves for the restoration of the old, prosperous world by long, highly ritualised sequences of dancing. In 1890 the movement was taken to the Sioux of South Dakota, the largest and strongest Indian tribe but severely beleaguered in their dwindling reserves. Harassed by the US agencies some 3,000 Sioux retreated to the inaccessible Bad Lands of their reserve and the Ghost Dance became almost constant. The rebels were rounded up and taken to Wounded Knee creek for parley and disarming. On the morning of 29 December 1890 they were massacred, despite the protection which their 'ghost shirts' were supposed to afford them. Thereafter the Sioux capitulated and were 'pacified', and throughout the Plains the movement gradually died out. It failed mainly because it was a desperate gesture of a (large) minority against the relentless advance of white power. The Indians could neither subvert nor share that power, nor could they withdraw into reformist seclusion - they were pursued even into the Bad Lands. Their vision of an ideal world was impracticably retrogressive, and they pursued it with an organisational device which allowed no realistic engagement with the US government. Hobsbawm had a sad epitaph for 'primitive movements' of this kind: 205

Contradictions Without being imprinted with therightkind of ideas about political organization, strategy and tactics and therightkind of programme, millenarianism inevitably collapses . . . It can be, indeed it always seems to be, intensely moving to anyone who cares for the fate of man: but as we have seen, it will certainly be perennially defeated. (Hobsbawm 1959: 106-7) Although such movements may have a remarkable capacity to consolidate categoric interests and identities, collective energies are dissipated in activities which pursue divine rather than terrestrial power. Had it not been suppressed the Ghost Dance would probably have fallen victim quite soon to the failure of its millenarian expectations in the face of deepening oppression. History would appear to be a graveyard of millenarian movements and failed revolutions; however, in the long term and cumulatively they may have a degree of success (the twentieth century may still see a kind of liberal reformist fulfilment of Indian dreams of a restituted social order). Worsley points out that they have provided a persistent undercurrent of resistance to superordinate power and ideology, the prevalence of redemptive hope over failure and despair (1957: 225). Reality, it seems, can never wholly displace aspirations to an ideal world. In a Marxian schema these movements have failed because they were structurally and historically inopportune, no matter how heroic their efforts may have been. The Communist Manifesto insists that 'All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities', and avers that only the revolutionary movement of the proletariat in capitalist society has the massive historical force to be conclusively successful. Its revolutionary force is inexorable: it 'cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air' (Marx & Engels 1967: 92). Marxist views have always been equivocal about the role of human will in this process, about the relative force of historical momentum and political imagination. Certainly, one Marxian stream of thought sees revolution as contingent on popular penetration of the protective 'false' ideology of the bourgeois state and perception of the 'real' distribution of power and class loyalties. It is often noted that the 'real' revolutions of the twentieth century have failed to develop according to Marxian prognoses, especially in the role assigned to the industrial working class. As Barrington Moore (1967: 453) and others have remarked, modern revolutions have been at heart agrarian revolutions. Even the Russian crisis of 1917 is a case in point: although advised by marxist strategy and teleology it was very far from being a massive proletarian uprising. The crumbling ancien regime finally disintegrated in the Great War, and 'The Bolsheviks took power because power, by October 1917, was there for the taking and they were the only 206

Revolutionary

movements

group with the nerve to take power on the terms on which alone it could be taken' (Dunn 1972: 40-1). The collapse of the old order had been marked by a dialectic between reformists (Mensheviks) and revolutionaries, and the power of the latter was consolidated only when it was plain that the state was beyond redemption. The Bolsheviks were not numerous but had strong ideological motivation and robust party organisation, galvanised under the leadership of Lenin. Unchallenged by more inspired or better organised forces they established dictatorial control over the remains of the state apparatus, then over the proletariat, extending the 'revolution from above' much more slowly to the rural masses during the Stalinist phase. Russian history makes the interplay between reformism and revolution very clear. The thoroughgoing revolution (Skocpol 1979: 206) was matched by a no less thoroughgoing process of intensively planned reform whose consequences for the twentieth century world we have traced in Chapter 1. Today the socialist premise that effective reform can proceed only from revolution finds some support even among liberal commentators, who see, for example, reformist measures in India as serving only to compound stagnation and decay (Moore 1967: 413; Hanson 1966: 24). However, it is equally clear that the revolution which proceeds no further than political crisis and does not issue into a painstaking process of social reconstruction will have achieved very little. An example of this pragmatic shift is the transformation of the revolutionary movement in the Solomon Islands in the 1940s, known as 'Marching Rule'. This had its roots in the social, political and economic crises of colonial rule, exacerbated by the war in the Pacific. Melanesia had an unsavoury history of 'blackbirder' labour depredations to man the colonial copra estates. The war brought the collapse of copra production, the stranding of migrant labour, the traumas of Japanese occupation and the further traumas of Allied reconquest. Large numbers of labourers were absorbed into 'volunteer' labour corps, paid a tiny fraction of free market wages. In Malaita of the Solomon Islands disaffection initially took the regionally characteristic form of a 'cargo cult', but from its passionate millenarian beginnings in 1944 the movement rapidly matured into an efficient political front against the debilitated colonial state. Even in the early phases when storehouses and jetties were being built for the anticipated 'cargo', the movement in Malaita was highly constructivist. Very soon the emphasis shifted to practical social organisation; from a group of leaders with experience of army and colonial government service Timothy George emerged as a literate and articulate organiser. A villageisation and agricultural improvement scheme was established and the expanding membership of the movement was constrained by a rigorous military programme from which the name 'Marching Rule' appears to 207

Contradictions have derived. A fiscal system was set up, and the Island divided into nine administrative districts with new councils and courts. In attempting to root out this rival government the colonial authorities seem only to have fuelled the movement. By 1946 it had become 'a militant political party, expressing an embryonic nationalism and uniting scores of formerly separate and minute social groups' (Worsley 1957: 178). Driven underground, Marching Rule resorted to guerrilla tactics and in an attempt at appeasement the colonial government offered reforms and development projects of its own. Eventually it was persuaded to capitulate and recognise the 'Marching Rule Federal Council' as the effective apparatus of government. Although national independence was still twenty-six years away there is no doubt that it was based - more securely than in many other new states - on this remarkable authentic process of revolution and reform (see Belshaw 1954; Worsley 1957). If Marching Rule was a regional revolutionary movement which paved the way for national reform, the peasant uprising led by Emiliano Zapata, which issued into the Mexican Revolution early this century, followed a contrary pattern. One reason why it is impossible to declare precisely when this revolution 'began' and 'ended' is because it arose from a nineteenth-century history of popular rebellions and reformist movements, and was slowly consolidated in an era of reform during this century. The roots of the crisis which Zapata and his followers helped to precipitate extended back to the independence struggles at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to the ensuing annexation wars with the USA, and to sporadic provincial uprisings through to the end of the century. Attempts at reform had only fostered the growth of a landed aristocracy and an impoverished and disaffected rural population: 'the land-hungry large estates pushed ever more strongly against the remaining Indian communities and small farms' (Wolf 1971: 47). Under the dictatorial regime of Porfirio Diaz (1876-1910, the 'Porfiriato'), some two million acres, including about a fifth of Mexico's reserves of public land, were alienated. As a broker in land and in the expanding interests of foreign capital the Porfiriato traded on the weakness and fragmentation of social classes (op. cit.: 284). Nevertheless, resistance was gaining ground, notably among the liberal middle and upper classes and the wage labourers who, as migrants to the USA, were exposed to the anarchosyndicalist ideas of the International Workers movement. The revolution is widely reckoned to have been initiated 'from above' by Francisco Madero, a wealthy landholding lawyer, who scheduled 20 November 1910 as the date for a national uprising against the discredited Porfiriato. His call evoked an immediate response in two rural areas: Morelos, a densely settled sugar producing area which had been extensively subjected to hacienda predations, and in Chihuahua, a northern frontier 208

Revolutionary movements region with a politically alert mercantile class and a tough, marginalised mining and ranching workforce. Although they had many points of contact, it is characteristic of the Mexican revolution that these two movements never coalesced, and that their respective leaders, Zapata and Pancho Villa, did not meet for nearly five years. Zapata first came to local eminence as the elected head of a peasants' defence committee at Anenecuilco in September 1909. 'We'll back you', a voice at the back of the crowd called out on that occasion, 'we just want a man with pants on, to defend us' (Womack 1972: 27). His task was to organise legal and, if necessary, physical resistance to hacienda encroachment on the communal lands of the Morelos pueblos. This child of mixed parentage, a smallholder who affected cowboy clothes, became the reluctant hero of Anenecuilco and, in retrospect, of the Mexican nation. Notwithstanding his subsequent celebrity Zapata's ideas were very limited, localist and restitutive. Dunn observes that 'Zapata and his men had only a memory: not enough to win power (or even wish to win power) and unite a nation . . . the memory of a community, the ancient pueblos of Morelos which the progress of agricultural capitalism had almost contrived to obliterate' (1972: 58). It is remarkable that this dream should have survived the crises of revolution to become the main inspiration for the subsequent era or reform. By contrast 'Villa and the ranchhands of Chihuahua had neither a memory nor a dream to offer the people of Mexico' (ibid.), only a keen sense of injustice and a zealous but freebooting style of leadership. The influence of both groups would have extended little further than their own regions had they not entered into alliance with people much closer to the machinery of the state. In 1909 Zapata went to work as a groom in Mexico City and there became acquainted with urban radicals; two of these, Otilio Montano and Diaz Soto y Gama, became prominent Zapatista ideologues. At Anenecuilco later that year Zapata led the peasants in armed rebellion. The landowners retreated and the Zapatistas took the provincial cities of Cautla and Cuernavaca. From 1910 to 1911 Zapata held sway in this part of Morelos and from this position of strength joined forces with Madero and his Constitutionalists. This alliance proved as unreliable as others which the rural rebels formed: in 1911 General Huerta's army, supposedly under Madero's control, swept through Morelos on a punitive expedition, driving the Zapatistas underground. A vigorous guerrillero ensued, and Zapata was moved to produce his first formal manifesto, with the help of his ideologue schoolmaster Montano. This he called, in an established Mexican idiom, the 'Plan of Ayala'; it was essentially a statement of reformist goals, a scheme for the seizure of purloined lands and a charter for the ejidos, the communal holdings. In 1913 an army revolt turned the tables. Madero was ousted and after 209

Contradictions a year of popular insurgence Zapata led 70,000 of his men into Mexico City. This was his apogee - the state was his if he had had the capacity to take it. Soto y Gama refurbished the Plan of Ayala into something resembling a revolutionary manifesto, including a call to arms to the Mexican people (Womack 1972: 533-46). It was at this point that Villa and Zapata met and formed a vague 'fraternal union', but it was plain that they 'could not create a political machine that would govern the country' (Wolf 1971: 37). Only the Constitutionalists, with their access to the machinery of the state and comprehension of national and international affairs, had such capacity, and even they were divided after the fall of Madero. Carranza's liberal wing grudgingly endorsed the Plan of Ayala, and Obregon, leader of the radical wing, realised he 'could only break the hold of Villa and Zapata by promising viable social reforms' (op. cit.: 40). Carranza, assured of army support, soon reneged on his promises and in 1916 drove Zapata back into the heart of Morelos. This only provoked a more intense and more skilful guerrillero, and a period of constructive political reorganisation within Morelos, very similar to the efforts of the Marching Rule Federal Council. Land was surveyed and redistributed and a new framework of government, albeit crude and disjointed, was established. In October 1915 Soto y Gama had composed a new 'Manifesto to the Nation' for the Zapatistas, a revolutionary pronouncement for the peasants' next excursion to the centre of power. In Mexico City, other interest groups viewed these peasant manoeuvres without enthusiasm, and according to their strategic utility. Notably chilly was the urban proletariat, whose trivial role in the Mexican revolution is striking. The so-called 'Red Batallions' sided with Carranza's liberals and 'fought for the cities and civilization against the countryside' (Dunn 1972: 69); and for his part Zapata 'had no comprehension of the needs and interests of the industrial workers and never knew how to attract their support' (Wolf 1971: 32). The revolution was not accomplished by Zapata, ambushed and killed in April 1919, or even by Carranza, assassinated a year later. It was consolidated over a period of twenty years, most notably under the government of Lazaro Cardenas (1934-40) who saw through the programme of land reform, the dismantling of latifundia power and the extension of the communal ejidos to some 40 million acres. Thus Zapata's Plan of Ayala eventually 'became famous as the premier banner of modern Mexico's most remarkable and controversial experiment, agrarian reform' (Womack 1972: 533). If the ejidos have not been notably successful in modernising agriculture this must be partly because modernity was not a Zapatista goal; rather, they were concerned with 'the preservation of a form of social life, of a community' (Dunn 1972: 66). In 1920 the Mexican revolution was accomplished in the sense that the 210

Utopia, the state and social science old order was dismissed and beyond resurrection, but as a process of social reconstruction it had barely begun. This programme became the responsibility of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which, as its name might suggest, was established to administer the revolution rather than to prosecute it (Dunn 1972: 51). The revolution was realised by the new heirs of the Mexican state, and the strength and prosperity which that state has subsequently enjoyed were perhaps the greatest achievement of the period of national crisis in which Zapata had played such a prominent part (Skocpol 1979: 3; Wolf 1971: 46).

Utopia, the state, and social science

The basic question of every revolution is that of state power.' As Skocpol points out, Lenin's remark is ambiguous, evidently recognising that while it is the purpose of revolutionary movements to challenge and break state power, in reality the best they can expect is to fall heir to that power. If, from the point of view of the masses, revolutions tend to disappoint, it is largely because they produce new national regimes rather than the promised social transformations. To the pessimist, the new political order always fails to inaugurate the ideal world for the subject population, presenting the gloomy Lockean prospect of a cycle of revolutions and counter-revolutions, 'utopian departures and authoritarian returns' (Lasky 1976: 413). Today there are many regimes which claim revolutionary authority. A period of political upheaval or rebellion is officially construed as revolutionary change, and the ideas of a new world and a revitalised political leadership are fused ideologically. The fragility of such an assumption is all too apparent. For example, in February 1967 Uganda's Chief Justice legally endorsed Milton Obote's Republic as the valid consequence of revolution - the crushing by federal forces of rebellion in the Kingdom of Buganda. However expedient this gesture may have been at the time, it was a fiction which did nothing to fortify the longer-term prospects either of Obote's regime or of the Ugandan state (see Robertson 1982: 99ff.). It could be said that revolutions have only definitively happened when new regimes say so. It is they who formally inaugurate the new epoch, presenting an authoritatively revised version of the past and the future. As James Harrison has shown for the case of communist China, historiography may have a salient part to play: new interpretations of peasant uprisings and rebellions which occurred up to two millennia ago have been 'directed to showing that the strivings of mankind were the driving force of history and not deviations from the classical ideals of harmonious social relations' (1970: 273). The ideological function of this 'didactic, popular history' has 211

Contradictions been to 'advance national interests by stressing revolutionary heritage and commitment' (op. cit.: 276). Not only has revolution become a source of legitimacy for regimes, it has, in a curious way, been made internationally respectable, and has become something of an institution in the twentieth century. The naivety and innocence of the peasant dreams which inspired the Mexican revolution are surely things of the past; revolutionary movements today are advised by global ideologies, and by well-known precedents such as the experience of Russia or China. At the same time, revolution now offers diminishing prospects for radical change because the state itself is sustained as much by international as by national sanctions. Today the power of the state is globally established: no state is fully autonomic and no regime has complete freedom to put its own house in order. International guarantees help to make communist or anarchist dreams of the evaporation or abolition of the state decreasingly probable. It could be argued that dispelling state power would in itself require the exercise of power far beyond the capacity of any state we have ever known or are likely to know. Today, regimes live within the rubric of the state, dependent on its personnel, the rule of law and ultimately the use of physical sanctions. It is in the nature of regimes to insist that this configuration represents the best of all possible worlds, and that amelioration can be achieved only by reform. The regime asserts its own construction of morality and of progress, and the more assured it is the less tolerant it is of rival versions. In his celebrated thesis, Karl Mannheim (1936) contrasted ideology with Utopia, the dominant political vision or moral propriety versus the perpetual welling-up of critical and counterfactual moral images from within society. The implication of his argument is that regimes are obliged to appropriate Utopia as an instrument of political power, and to exclude all rivals: the idea that there may be a better world under some other management is profoundly discordant, if not seditious. Accordingly the ideal and the real world become one, and 'utopia' becomes pejorative - particularly in the reformist language of national planning. Today, the 'superpowers' have taken possession of Utopia, evoking it repeatedly in ideology and rhetoric: 'Under Stalin it was "consolidation of socialism"; under Khrushchev, the initiation of "the full scale construction of communism"; under Brezhnev, "the stage of developed socialist activity" . . . ' (Manuel & Manuel 1979: 804). Meanwhile, 'An American Utopia has been competing with the Marxist one in the concoction of slogans. We have moved from New Deal to Fair Deal to New Frontier to Great Society to President Carter's inaugural excursion on "the Dream", tout court (op. cit.: 806). Divested of rhetoric the two lethally contraposed power blocs of today would claim to aspire to two distinct ideal 212

Utopia, the state and social science worlds, nominally liberal and socialist. The former visualises societies of free men competing in free markets, their interests moderated by strong but democratically responsive states. For its part, socialism looks to a society purged by revolution, in which altruism and a truly egalitarian productive system have made political power redundant. As Gellner puts it, liberalism would embody a defence of liberty against tyranny, and socialism the prevention of poverty in the face of exploitation (1964:118). Meanwhile, reality confronts us with contrary trends: the relentless accretion of state power under socialism, and the declining capacity of the liberal democracies to contain the crises of capitalism. Poverty, inequity and inefficiency persist. It seems that, in taking possession of Utopia, modern states have possessed themselves of a falsehood. In parallel with the liberal and socialist ideal worlds we have two main streams of social theory: evolutionary functionalism and historical materialism. It is striking that the high priests of both theoretical traditions have been outspoken in their condemnation of Utopian speculation. The Marxian critique is well known; Marx and Engels 'conceived of their doctrine dialectically as an outgrowth of earlier Utopian thought and its contradiction', taking the stern view that' "the man who draws up a programme for the future is a reactionary" ' (Manuel & Manuel 1979: 10, 698). A better world will come not because it is desirable, but because it is 'necessary and inevitable' (Lasky 1976: 592). There is no doubt that Marx has a grudging sympathy for humanitarian reformists like Robert Owen, but the Communist Manifesto is swingeing in its condemnation of 'duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem' (Marx & Engels 1967: 117). Later marxists have shown guarded interest in social movements which are not revolutionary in the strict sense, but they have eschewed sympathetic analytical attention to the history of Utopian speculation. The subject has been more popular among liberal social scientists, but it is notable that their treatment of it - and of the social movements arising from it - has generally been disparaging. In psychologistic terms they have seen it as a pathological trait, a symptom of emotional incapacity in the face of social change; in sociologistic terms they have interpreted Utopian movements as 'anomic', as wayward responses to functional disintegration in the traditional social order. Utopian behaviour has been seen as irrational, folksy attempts to accommodate, or evade, the inexorable thrust of modernisation. Insofar as modernity is an expression of the liberal ideal world (see Chapter 1) it is inimical to other, rival ideal worlds, and is inclined to disparage Utopian speculation as irrational, unprogressive, and even dangerous. For Karl Popper it is an inspiration to violence: 'the violence which Utopianism breeds looks very much like the running amok of an evolutionary metaphysics, of an hysterical philosophy of history, eager to sacrifice the present for the splendours of 213

Contradictions the future, and unaware that its principle would lead to sacrificing each particular future period for one which comes after it' (1965: 362). This distaste for speculation on alternative ideal worlds is strangely at odds with the liberal tenet of 'openness'. Averring that he prefers 'doubt to dogma', the liberal philosopher-anthropologist Ernest Gellner declares: 'I subscribe warmly to the ethic of openness . . . The requirements of liberalism and openness, combined with the requirements of industrialisation and affluence - the requirement that men should not unnecessarily live lives of poverty, disease and early death - seem to me to be the two bases of any contemporary political assessment' (1964: 113). Admitting the difficulty of supporting this view with clear argument, Gellner pleads that liberal societies are freer because they see the future as uncertain. Gellner is against evolutionary teleology ('world growth stories will not do' (op. cit.: 32)) and, like all liberals, stoutly against any entelechy which extends to violence and revolutionary change. What is important is the immediate task of promoting industrialisation and solving its problems piecemeal (Gellner takes a sympathetic view of Marx's account of the historical episode of industrial capitalism); but speculation about idealised futures is mischievous. Doubtless he would agree with Popper's belief that we must 'make life a little less terrible and a little less unjust in each generation' (1965: 362). A vision of the future which extends no further than ameliorated images of the existing liberal democracies is not very inspiring, particularly for the newer and poorer nations of the world which have little reason to feel satisfied with their own immediate prospects. If the liberal ideal world is, in a sense, absurdly accessible (America with the ghettos cleaned up?), the counterfactual world of historical materialism is absurdly inaccessible: it is severed from reality by the trauma of revolution, and will be given substance by that crisis and not by advance speculation. There is no lack of millenarian promise in Marx's writing (the Manuels remark, for example (1979: 699) on the 'Utopian glossolalia' of the Critique of the Gotha Programme), but clear images of a social structure of communism are extremely rare. A fragment from 'The Civil War in France' asks: 'if united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under their control . . . what else would it be but Communism, "possible" Communism?' However, even this brief excursion into the future is immediately pursued by the familiar caveat: 'The working class . . . have no ready-made Utopias to introduce par decret du peuple . . . They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which the old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant' (Marx 1958a: 523). As Lenin discovered in 1918, the revolution itself may not effect the transformation to which the people aspire: 'what socialism will be' he was 214

Utopia, the state and social science obliged to confess, 'we just don't know' (Lasky 1976: 50). It is doubtful that his successors have very much clearer knowledge. For the masses who might be less prepared to take the rewards of the revolutionary struggle and its more taxing reformist aftermath on trust, Bukharin and Preobrazhensky sought to flesh out the images of a communist paradise. A notable feature of this 'huge co-operative commonwealth' was the way it defied any classical understanding of the division of labour in industrial society: Under communism people receive a many-sided culture, and find themselves at home in various branches of production: today I work in an administrative capacity, I reckon up how many felt boots or how many French rolls must be produced during the following month; tomorrow I shall be working in a soap factory, next month in a steam laundry, and the month after in an electric power station. This will be possible when all members of society have been suitably educated. (Bukharin & Preobrazhensky 1966: 72)

When this new world is established, 'products will be distributed according to need, for there will be an abundance of everything' (op. cit.: 73). The state will, of course, have withered away: 'there is no-one to be held in restraint, and there is no-one to impose restraint' (op. cit.: 74). To a functionalist social scientist the notion of the abolition of the division of labour in large-scale industrial society is unintelligible, as is the (very ancient) Utopian notion of the extension of community to the level of global society. Such fantastic changes, he might argue, would depend not on altruism but on the exercise of truly totalitarian power. How else could planning, the sine qua non of this perfected society, be sustained? How could such a complex exercise be deprofessionalised to the level of 'bookkeeping' (op. cit.: 74), and how could it possibly be freed of political content? To a marxist it is, of course, to be expected that the structure of communist society should be beyond the intellectual reach of bourgeois social science. What is more disturbing is that marxist analytical categories themselves can give us no intellectual purchase on the future which historical materialism promises and asks us to commit ourselves to. For example, P.P. Rey wonders whether communism can be described as a 'mode of production'; it is so, he concludes, only 'by extension', and would presumably obtain within the 'cooperative relations which exist between producers when they are liberated from the relations of exploitation'. For the historical materialist, the problem is that communism is not (yet) a reality; it 'does not exist except in the hopes of the oppressed and the exploited', and is thus 'not amenable to analysis' (1979: 41-2). The admission that marxist social science only holds good for the past, for the rise of capitalism and the crises of its development, is neither a reassuring nor a very rational basis for revolutionary commitment. 215

Contradictions As Dunn has remarked, the idea that a more satisfactory mode of production is within the grasp of the proletariat - or anyone else - is a commitment to an obvious falsehood. More important, if revolution is essentially an act of faith, the equation of progress with violence cannot be morally condoned: Revolutionary political action, the practice of a just civil war, is a precarious attempt . . . to synthesize violence and justice . . . it essays this synthesis in a peculiarly ambitious fashion and on unusually unfavourable terrain, defining the telos of revolution, overambitiously, as Utopia and deploying the moral splendour of this intended . . . destination to excuse what in practice often amounts simply to murder and sometimes to murder on a very large scale. (Dunn 1979: 88). However, while Barrington Moore acknowledges that the communist defence of revolution requires 'too great a surrender of critical rationality', he is no more enthusiastic about western liberal ideals: 'the costs of modernization have been at least as atrocious as those of revolution, perhaps a great deal more' (1967: 507, 505). As the twentieth century draws to a close, the cry of 'a plague on both your houses' gains in volume. Stridently asserted ideologies bolster the power of particular regimes and particular states, and are brought to bear vigorously on the political crises of today. As resources for coming to grips with the future they are intellectually and morally vacuous. Their main theoretical prognoses are already palpably false - notably in the failure of the state either to wither away or to become democratically more efficient. In some countries it is, as Bakunin put it, very much a tyranny of the minority over the majority in the name of the people; the professed public ideology is almost irrelevant. The rhetoric of the liberal and socialist worlds gains its momentum more from opposition than from constructive optimism, from a distaste for capitalism or revolutionary communism rather than from coherent speculation on the world's future (v. Dunn 1979: 97). 'What distresses the critical historian today', the Manuels complain, 'is the discrepancy between the piling up of technological and scientific instrumentalities for making all things possible, and the pitiable poverty of goals' (1979: 811). With its ideological complicity, social science is incapable of offering guidance. All we have are various self-assertive positivisms and evolutionary teleologies which evade moral judgment. As Gellner gloomily notes, we are stuck with the 'world growth stories' devised to explain industrialisation in the nineteenth century, and are now unable to distinguish trends from norms (1964: 32). Within the rubric of contemporary higher education, social theory has become institutionalised. It has joined ideology and Utopia in an unholy trinity, a power bloc 216

Utopia, the state and social science of ideas which threaten to monopolise and preclude alternative constructive speculation about our future. It was not always like this. Indeed, it is salutory to reflect that up to the nineteenth century Utopian speculation was the driving force in social philosophy, and provided the foundations for contemporary social science. The Manuels' exhaustive and illuminating history of Utopian Thought in the Western World (1979) makes this heritage very clear, and serves to remind us how limited, unimaginative and derivative our own intellectual edifices are. Until the industrial revolution the main analytical style was the measuring off of existing against ideal worlds, which were often constructed with a high degree of finesse. Thereafter, the real and ideal worlds became elided in social theory, part of the quest for an objective 'science'. Theory has been subsumed within the ideology of the nation states which were also the progeny of the industrial revolution, leaving us with some very technical notions about the pursuit of progress. This is the 'social science of planning' outlined in earlier chapters. Professional planners today might not wish to be reminded that their theories have in their ancestry Judeo-Christian speculation about what Heaven is really like. Thomas More, Campanella and most other early social philosophers worked within this 'religious' tradition, but they were also intricately engaged in the real economic and political world. The thoroughness of many of their constructions, which are very clearly the antecedents of modern development planning, is impressive: James Harrington's Oceana (1656), set up as a recipe for Cromwell's Commonwealth, was accompanied by a detailed costing of the whole complex system (a mere £339,000). The late seventeenth- and early eighteenthcentury period of the Enlightenment emphasised the increasingly terrestrial concerns of Utopian speculation: 'In these rationalist, systematic Utopias whose province was the whole world, the means of reaching Utopia was transformed from an adventure story or a rite of passage to Elysium into a question of political action: How do you change a present misery into a future happiness in this world?' (Manuel & Manuel 1979: 3). The Enlightenment was a major crucible for social science, fusing a concern for social progress and an interest in historical process, stimulating an interest in the scientific study of society and initiating a search for the laws which might explain the predicament, and determine the perfectibility of mankind. The central problematic was again the vexed dialectic of all Utopian thought: the reconciliation of individual and communal needs, of freedom and constraint, selfishness and equity, self-fulfilment and social progress. For Rousseau, this tension between the 'moi' and the 'moi commun' was resolved within the social contract; his concern for a fusion of community and state, a theme of increasing significance in social philosophy, was elaborated in his constitutional design for Corsica (op. 217

Contradictions cit.: 448ff.). True to the new scientific creed, Condorcet argued for censuses and surveys as a 'data base' for what he saw as 'the limitless perfectibility of the human faculties and the social order' (op. cit.: 511). More dourly, Adam Ferguson was inspired by 'sober devotion to "plausible proposals" for "plans of improvement" ' (Lasky 1976: 437). With the industrial revolution and the advent of the nineteenth century the scientific attitude began to harden into dogma. Social philosophers were less absorbed in speculation on better worlds, and more animated by the need to make sense of the drastic changes which were already in train, willy nilly, in the western world. History was scrutinised for patterns which might account for the origins, scale, complexity and tribulations of industrialising society, and for predictions about what was likely to happen next. Marx, Weber and Durkheim, a trio celebrated in university curricula as founding fathers of social science, were essentially concerned with explaining the advent, crises and outcomes of industrialisation, a force which was dividing social labour minutely and subordinating man to machine. The industrial revolution initiated a revolution in social thought; Gellner has even insisted that philosophy as we know it today is 'about' industrialisation: 'The type of knowledge available to industrial societies is qualitatively so superior to any others that it hardly deserves to be classed under the same name . . . Industry is, essentially, the ecology of a society possessed of science. Science, essentially, is the form of cognition of industrial society' (1964: 72). If science is the intellectual expression of industrial society, the modern nation state is its political expression. The state may be viewed not only in functional terms as a response to the increased scale and complexity of society and the need for rational management, but as a response to international competition for the new wealth. Thus imperialism and the expansion of capitalism stimulated the developmental concerns discussed in Chapter 1. By the early twentieth century, science, social idealism and the state had become fused, and Utopian thought had essentially become an extension of national ideologies. The Manuels complain of a marked degeneration of Utopian writing in the latter part of the nineteenth century, seeing it absorbed within the genre of the Victorian novel, 'derivative, syncretistic and infinitely boring' (1979: 759). Like Theodor Hertzka's Freeland (1890), involving settlement in Kenya, these works echoed nationalist and imperial ventures, and by comparison with earlier Utopias lacked critical and analytical edge. They were not, however, without influence: their main function was to reinforce through popular media the ideologies of the day. A conspicuous example was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward 2000-1887, in which the dreamer is carried forward to an ameliorated version of his own Boston environment. The book expressed a 'longing for early America, 218

Utopia, the state and social science utopianized' (Manuel & Manuel 1979: 762), and combined a veneration of Victorian gentility with the promise of material prosperity under an idealised liberal regime. As such, it became one of the principal charters of the 'American Dream' of the twentieth century. In his introduction to the 1967 edition, John L. Thomas observes: . . . despite the radical disjunctions inherent in the Utopian device itself Looking Backward is a piece of social conservatism fashioned to reinforce accepted American values and traditions. It reaffirmed belief in a specifically American doctrine of progress which it strengthened with a new organicism and historicism. The book reasserted even as it modified the primacy of moral reform as the American way and helped to connect the evangelical perfectionism of the Civil war reformers with the moralistic prospect of the Progressives. (Thomas 1967: 86)

Morgan has argued the direct influence of Bellamy's book on the formation of American liberal ideology: it fuelled nationalism, inspired populist movements, was absorbed within the creed of the democratic party, and found expression in Roosevelt's New Deal policies (1946: 9). Many writers have remarked on the elision of Utopia and American liberalism - 'the best of all possible worlds'. Lockwood remarks that it was this 'shift of Utopia to a national scale', as much as anything, which put Oneida, Harmony and the other communes out of business (1965: 416). The Utopian spirit was incorporated in twentieth-century reformism, most notably in the civic design ventures of Howard, Geddes and others. Liberal energies were devoted to enhancing a generally beneficent social system rather than seeking to supplant it. It was not in the nature of one ideal world to accommodate another, and accordingly Utopian speculation became unfashionable, an occupation of cranks and quacks and enemies of the state, not of respectable social scientists. The late twentieth century finds us once again in more pessimistic mood. Western states are taking increasing interest in planning for the perpetration and consequences of nuclear holocaust. Unless we can discover, and apply ourselves to, some more constructive goals there is every chance that our newfound capacities will indeed destroy us. At no time have we more urgently needed to exert control over our collective future and at no time has social philosophy been less able to offer rational guidance. As the 'crisis in planning' deepened in the 1960s, Nettl remarked: Tt seems to me that we are now due for some "philosophy" in the area of socio-political development. At the moment we are in an impasse' (1969: 14). We still are. The 1970s brought us not 'philosophy' but the recrudescence of various marxisms which told us a good deal about what was wrong and why we could expect no immediate improvement, but which could offer us no more than stale revolutionary rhetoric by way of remedy. The plea for a longer-range, more humane and more practicable 219

Contradictions guiding vision for planned development is an old one. For example, in 1958 Dube complained of a 'lack of a sense of social direction' in the Indian rural development programme, and called for closer consideration of the question: 'What type of society does it visualise?' (1958:148). The fate of so many development projects makes it painfully evident how contracted our time-horizons have become. Rather than thinking about the next millennium we are living hand-to-mouth in a way our ancestors would have regarded as lethally profligate. The state Utopias of liberalism and socialism regale us with 'the exciting prospect of societies eating their way into the kingdom of heaven on earth without surfeit' (Manuel & Manuel 1979: 807). Development plans are governed by short-term political and economic expediencies, timed more for the survival of a government or regime than for the cycle of human generations, and it is hardly surprising that they soon degenerate into aimlessness and atrophy. Any effective reappraisal of the terms for our survival and, more modestly , our progress, will have to be conducted at the intimate level of family and community with which anthropologists are familiar, and on the grand scale which is the purview of historians and political philosophers. In his pessimistic assessment of 'Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future', Dunn reminds us of the deficiencies of contemporary social science and urges us to contemplate seriously, soberly and imaginatively whether there is 'a world to win', both for the advanced capitalist societies and the great majority of the world's population which do not yet inhabit such societies (1979: 117). It seems that the division of professional labour in social science has put the comprehensive vision of mankind which is required beyond our reach. Instead of informed and imaginative thought about the constitution of states and societies, we have a social science which can do little more than paper over the cracks in the societies in which we live. 'Progress', Oscar Wilde declared, 'is the realisation of Utopias' (n.d.: 34). Pleas for Utopian speculation which proceeds from the considerable resources of information at our disposal (see for example Mumford 1923; Morgan 1946; Mead 1976) have largely fallen on deaf ears, probably because few scholars have felt able to go against the proprieties of an objective social science. It may prove impossible to rehabilitate this as a technique, 'a critical focus between the real and the ideal' (Lasky 1976: 592), a means for demystifying the present as well as contemplating a more desirable future. But even the attempt may help to provide some more effective images of progress, and to revitalise a stagnant social science.

220

Populism Populism: an ideology of national development planning

To paraphrase Lenin: The basic question of every reform is that of state power'. Reformist measures - 'development' as we generally know it today - both express state power and depend upon it. To put the matter in the language of liberal social science: 'To cope successfully with modernization, a political system must be able, first, to innovate policy, that is to promote social and economic reform by state action' (Huntington 1968: 140). Today, the critical distinction is not between states which are reformist and those which are not {all states are, in varying degrees, reformist), but between states which can premise their legitimacy, and their planned development, on some revolutionary upheaval, and those which cannot plausibly do so. The socialism of the USSR, Cuba or China has been made possible by the revolutionary consolidation of state power; other regimes are incapacitated by fissures in the societies over which they preside, and by the persistent threat of the dissolution of state power. There is no doubt that reforms can initiate revolutions, just as revolutions can (and usually do) initiate reforms. But the notion that planned development is revolutionary is an outright contradiction, mere rhetoric or wishful thinking. Regimes do not consciously plan their own downfall and, if the effects of planned development are to provide momentum for a revolutionary movement, this is a symptom of the weakness, not the strength of the state. The garbled relationship between ideology and planning is made evident in the insistence of various regimes that their development efforts are 'revolutionary'. This is at best an unfortunate metaphor. 'What is needed', the liberal planning specialists Griffin and Enos have urged, 'are controlled changes, i.e. planned revolutions. One object of planning in an underdeveloped country should be to implement the necessary major structural transformation of society in a conscious, explicit, orderly and rational manner' (1970: 184). One obvious fallacy of such a view is its supposition that the planning and controlling agency must itself remain exempt from the required 'major structural transformation' . It is in effect a cri de coeur of the kind we have discussed in Chapter 2: planners usually do not have as much power as they need, to do what they want to do. Our complaint that state ideologies and social science have no constructive grip on the future, that they offer only feeble guidelines for efforts at development planning, raises a number of interesting questions. Can we conclude that what we have identified in earlier chapters as the international institution of development planning is advised by no ideology? Are its processes governed only by random, short-range political interests, perhaps the caprices of particular regimes, or the dogma of 221

Contradictions some international agency? Taking our cue from a number of other commentators, we would suggest that this is not entirely true, and that a particular pattern of political belief has come to dominate the transactions of planned development. Peter Worsley (1967) seems to have been the first to insist that populism, hitherto associated most particularly with the Narodnichestvo in Russia and various agrarian reformist movements in North America in the late nineteenth century, has become a characteristic ideology of development since the Second World War. Although no particular regime has labelled itself 'populist', the term usefully convenes a number of traits which occur in many countries. As Worsley points out, it is fruitless to search for the original, systematic form of any ideology, and it is particularly pointless to try to trace the origins of a body of ideas as diffuse as those which have been labelled 'populist'. The central themes in populism are, however, quite clear: it is concerned with the encounter between the state and its agents on the one hand, and the 'people' - most particularly small rural producers - on the other. Ideologically, populism dwells on the uneasiness of this relationship: while urging greater harmony between state and people, it recognises that there are, or may be, antagonisms. From the perspective of the state, populist ideas articulate the need to secure the cooperation of 'ordinary simple people' in reformist endeavours, and usually do so by making the generous assumption that virtue rests with them - 'the people' - rather than with other more clearly identifiable groups and interests like businessmen, lawyers or the clergy. The same assumption may inspire the people themselves, and form a rationale for a social movement. However, although they may have little enthusiasm for a particular regime, such movements are not anti-state, they are reformist. They express no desire for communitarian anarchy or revolution, only a more beneficent relationship with rulers. Populism is about building bridges between state and people; it is pragmatic; it lacks an interest in long-range transformations, in teleology. For these, and other reasons which we shall explore, it resonates very clearly with the history, structure, processes, organisations, and contradictions of national development planning, as we have described them. In its reformist endeavours the state must depend on the cooperation of the masses, and in their own efforts to secure welfare and progress, ordinary people are obliged to rely on the organising capacities of the state. Thus the ameliorative process of planned development has come to depend on uneasy coalitions between people in various localities, occupations and classes on the one hand, and officials on the other. The populist beliefs which articulate these complex acts of mediation have been expressed most clearly by those who see themselves as in a position to forge better links between state and people - politicians and, notably, 222

Populism intellectuals. The two-sidedness of populism has been a source of confusion for those who have attempted to analyse it: it may describe the reformist intentions of the state, but it may also characterise a social movement, the aspirations of a particular group or category of people within the state. In either case, what is meant by 'the people' can be obscure, although much emotive play is made on the phrase. When officials appeal to 'the people' they do not have in mind a particular group of persons, but something more vague - an undifferentiated citizenry capable of concerted action. On the other hand populist movements usually originate among very distinctive groups of 'people' - small farmers in Alberta, young intellectuals in St Petersburg, or impoverished peasants in Morelos. They too may wish to represent their interests as generalised, but only to strengthen their own cause vis-a-vis the powersthat-be. Many populist movements have emanated from regional or ethnic groupings (v. Macrae 1969: 156) and have accordingly exhibited what Wiles has called a 'strong tendency to mild racism' (1969: 156). Particularly in the new states born of colonialism, these identities (rather than class) have been a focus for popular action against weak, corrupt or dictatorial regimes. They have accordingly been denounced very sharply by officialdom as a threat to the unity of 'the people'. Nationalism, both that espoused by states and that describing the identity of particular peoples within states, is thus one of the principal issues in populism. As Kedourie has observed: 'The essence of nationalism is that the will of the individual should merge with the will of the nation' (1966: 110). For the nation state, the ideological task is to ensure that any rival, sub-national loyalties are dissolved, and to reduce social diversity to a single, compliant mass of people. In a country as heterogeneous as India, this can only be wishful thinking; Pocock has remarked that 'the planner derives from western models an ideal of the unified secular state; he is planning for a people who, for the most part, think in terms of localized unities of castes, hierarchically organized according to religious values. Thus the situation is one of conflict' (1968: 271). Populism in the Third World owes much to the process of 'nation building'; nationalist movements in colonial states have tended to 'throw up great leaders in mystical contact with the masses' who have subsequently sought to use this identity of a single oppressed people for purposes of national coherence. China under Mao, and Tanzania under the leadership of that great populist Julius Nyerere, are paradigms of such a movement (v. Kitching 1982: 63-70; 103ff.). If populism has become widespread during the twentieth century it is because major patterns of economic change have made an issue of the relationship between the state with its expanding scale, power and economic ambitions, and the populace, who are confronted with the 223

Contradictions mixed blessings of industrial growth. According to their own ideological preferences, social scientists have explained this variously as part of the trauma of 'modernisation' or as a consequence of the relentless expansion of industrial capitalism (Laclau 1977: 175). For liberal scholars, industrialisation, with its differential effects on town and country, presents the predominantly rural people of Third World countries with tantalising opportunities and the anxieties of change (Stewart 1969: 186). As a social movement, Populism is . . . found among those aware of belonging to the poor periphery of an industrial system; in this sense it may be taken as a reaction to industrialism. But it is a reaction by those whose profoundest impulse may often be to industrialize: it is only if you cannot join them (and until you can) that you attack them. (Minogue 1969: 209-10)

Such movements may be expressed in an 'encounter between small-ruralproducer social order and the superior power of large-scale (usually capitalist) industry and commerce' (Worsley 1969: 241). As with the populist ideology of states, this may represent a yearning for social uniformity, a reaction against the inexorable division of labour in the modern world. In its appeals for consensus, populist rhetoric typically evokes the spirit of the harmonious rural community, a syndrome which we have discussed in Chapter 3. The ideal world of the populist is communitarian, stressing moral and social regeneration and an egalitarianism which has supposedly been lost in the urban, industrial world (Stewart 1969: 182). It inclines towards a romantic conservatism, 'the idea that once there was a good, a sacred time . . . a time of simple spontaneous order. It was close to, intimate with, the sacred, life-renewing soil' (Macrae 1969: 182). It has often celebrated the peasant; on the farm 'one lives in a holy, ritual, cyclical time, immune in its revolutions from the corruptions of real historical time, change and decay' (ibid.). Yet, in its urge for progress, it has often been disappointed by the vapid intransigence of the 'concrete' peasant. What intellectuals and politicians have pursued is an abstract agrarian Gemeinschaft, not something which an anthropologist would recognise as the ethnography of a real community. They have sought a synthesis, to 'organize social reconstruction around traditional institutions of the "people". The Russian obschina, the Mexican ejido, the Peruvian ayllu and the African village, all such variants of peasant communal ownership and activity have figured prominently in the ideologies of their particular populist movements' (Stewart 1969: 192). The village ethos is prevalent: African populism has not evoked tribal ideals, only those of an accessible, sedentary, peasant way of life (Macrae 1969:156). The organisations of planned development (see Chapter 3) are strikingly populist in intention: cooperative societies have been described as an economic ideal type in populist thought (Wiles 1969: 168), while one 224

Populism writer has gone so far as to suggest that communism is 'the highest and most radical form of populism' (Laclau 1977: 197; italics in original). A recurring dilemma is how to reconcile the advantages of economic and political scale in which the state operates with the social virtues of community. Populism is often hostile to 'Big-ness in general' (Worsley 1967: 166); the most notable example of this line of thought can be found in the work of E.F. Schumacher (1973) and the various notions of 'intermediate' and 'appropriate' development which he has inspired. The idea that 'small is beautiful' has strong anarchic antecedents, and the fundamental flaw of Schumacher's programme (as with other technological theories of development - see for example Hetzler 1973) is that they would wish away state power while at the same time placing heavy reformist demands on it. In his lively discussion of these contradictions, Rybczynski (1980) draws attention to the recurring desire for 'selfreliance', in which the oppositions between 'self and 'other' form a segmental hierarchy, expressing the antipathy of individual towards public bureaucracy, of neighbourhood for big-city politics, of village for state, and of nations in the international arena. 'Self-reliance' at all these levels simultaneously is plainly an illusion (op. cit.: 154). What populist movements seek is not communitarian autonomy, but a superordinate authority which is responsive to their needs, which will intervene (but not too much) to help simple folk. They are much less anxious to take power into their own hands than to see that it is used to their greater benefit: 'Where it affects themselves, populists want the state to be helpful rather than strong' (Wiles 1969: 170), but they are not averse to the state taking a tough line with other people. More radically minded intellectuals have often found these movements depressingly small-minded and parochial, and have found it very difficult to animate them with more revolutionary spirit. According to Macrae, populism is . . . profoundly a-political, and no basis for a sustained political party as distinct from a congerie of social movements . . . It goes beyond democracy to consensus, and it sacrifices the freedom it proclaims in the interest of a moral uniformity. It calls on the state to inaugurate restoration, but it distrusts the state and its bureaucracy and would minimise them before the rights and virtues of local communities and the populist individual. (Macrae 1969: 162)

The populism of states, particularly as it is expressed in planning, is in many respects a counterpart for this: it also craves for consensus and is embarrassed by politics. It seeks to contain conflicts of interest by proliferation of the bureaucratic apparatus, obliging people to resolve their differences in committees, councils and lawcourts. Reducing its concern for the people to such 'technical' devices, the state may find itself at odds with populist sentiments among the people themselves. The ideology may thus appear as vacuous as the grumblings of the people: 'in many under225

Contradictions developed societies, the populist celebration of the peasant, particularly celebration of the "communitarian" aspects of village society, remains simply part of the ideological armoury of rhetoric . . . lodged in party programmes and national mythology, but unimportant in practice' (Worsley 1969: 234). The Peronist appeal to the urban poor in Argentina is a particularly dismal example of this and, as we have seen, it is a persistent threat to the realisation of national plans. It seems that populist ideals have rarely been given much substance by mass mobilisation, and have depended much more on a web of patron-client relationships and on complex, particularistic ties (in the idiom of community life) among the leaders and the led. Vigorous mobilisation of the masses by a populist leader tends to be short-lived and ineffectual, unless it can be translated into state power, as was the case with the nationalist movements in the colonial countries. The continuity of state populism has depended on the extension of official patronage out into the rural localities by way of the bureaucratic hierarchy. As Worsley remarks, the persuasive capacities of a populist leader depend on his capacity to sustain a convincing impression of personal relationship with 'his people' (1967:1509); unfortunately, the peasant's mundane dealings with his state usually involve frustrating transactions with petty officials, who seem more anxious to tell him what to do than to listen attentively to his opinions. The chameleon-like characteristics of populist ideas make them very difficult to compare with other more familiar and apparently less mutable political ideologies. Populist views are as likely to appear on the Right as on the Left (Worsley 1969: 241). According to Wiles, there is much populism in Fascism (1969:176), and it has always rubbed shoulders with socialism: 'Lenin admitted a large influx of narodnik and indeed populist ideas and manners. He has been followed by other communists, notably Aldo Gramsci and Mao Tse-tung' (op. cit.: 178). Wiles has assembled a motley collection of populisms, including the Diggers, Gandhists, Poujadists, the Iron Guard and Sinn Fein (ibid.). Gavin Kitching's illuminating history of populism and development would extend this list to social scientists right and left today - Samir Amin, Gunder Frank, Lipton - and even to international organisations like the World Bank and the ILO. Certainly, speculation on happier relationships between virtuous rural people and reliable states is a very old theme, extending through the work of Fenelon and Babeuf to the Physiocrats, to Sismondi and the Ricardian socialists, and so to the 'neo-classical populists' of contemporary development studies (v. Manuel & Manuel 1979: 568; Kitching 1982 passim; Lehmann 1977). According to Minogue, populism is a 'notable plagiarist, making do with scraps of doctrine and images largely acquired from other, better established attitudes' (1969: 202). This is conspicuously the case in the 226

Populism Third World where 'items of the European thought world [have] been independently spread and re-combined to form various indigenous populisms' (Macrae 1969: 163). Negritude in Francophone Africa is a case in point, but one of the most remarkable examples of eclecticism is Sukarno's Five Principles {Pantjasila) for an independent Indonesia: Like all good constitutions, the Pantjasila was short, ambiguous and impeccably high-minded, the five points being 'nationalism,' 'humanitarianism,' 'democracy,' 'social welfare,' and (pluralistic) 'monotheism.' Finally, these modern concepts, set so nonchalantly in a medieval frame, were explicitly identified with an indigenous peasant concept, gotong royong (literally, 'the collective bearing of burdens'; figuratively, 'the piety of all for the interests of all'), thus drawing together the 'great tradition' of the exemplary state, the doctrines of contemporary nationalism, and the 'little traditions' of the villages into one luminous image. (Geertz 1964: 68)

However well it may sound, such an eclectic fabric of ideas may provide an incoherent basis for action in the form of national development planning. Hanson observes of problems in India that 'the plan formulators are ideologues in whose minds a variety of western-derived theories, all too often divorced from Indian reality, jostle for predominance. Nehru himself provided both the worst and the most distinguished example. Theory was always his strong point; but it was a little difficult to say whether he was a liberal contaminated by Marxism, or a Marxist contaminated by liberalism' (1966: 258). One of the strengths - indeed necessities - of populism is its capacity to take on local colour. Populisms cannot afford to be doctrinaire; pragmatism must be the single guiding thread of their behaviour. Nationalism has supplied them with a vocabulary suitable to their self-assertion expressing their claim to be unique and valuable, rather than simply indistinguishable prima materia fit for the inevitable process of industrialization. Liberalism has supplied them with many moral devices for coping with European overlords. And socialism provides them with guidance to the collectivist institutions which they instinctively feel are most suitable to their early experiments with industrial life. (Minogue 1969: 209)

To the cynical observer, the ideologies of new states have a cobbledtogether appearance, shoddy foreign derivatives serving comprador interests, tawdry window dressing for impoverished populations and foreign interests which might be persuaded to invest or give aid. There are too many references to the ideologies of other states, and not enough concern for the history and culture of 'the people' they purport to serve. Nationalist leaders have been confronted with the delicate task of celebrating the identity of a political unit originally established by the despised colonial power, of doing so in a way which will appear plausible in the minds of a diverse population and of a diverse international arena of states, while at the same time avoiding too close a commitment to the 227

Contradictions ideology of another state or too direct an association with the traditions of one particular sub-national group. The search for such a political identity is of great interest. For example, Ghana takes its name from an ancient kingdom some seven hundred miles away to the north-west; the dubious hypothesis that the population of the modern state had common origins in ancient Ghana was a source of inspiration to nationalist leaders from J.B. Danquah to Kwame Nkrumah. It established a respectable political ancestry in 'time immemorial' (a favourite Ghanaian expression) for the new state and for its 'people', and was used with conspicuous success by Nkrumah's Convention Peoples' Party (Levtzion 1973: 218-20). It is of more than passing interest that the anthropologist Eva Meyerowitz did much to authorise the 'Ghana hypothesis', and was an overt supporter of Nkrumah and the CPP (v. Robertson 1975a). However, it is very unlikely that conventional ethnographies would be of much use to nationalist and populist leaders: 'The self-image of nationalism involves the stress of folk, folklore, popular culture, etc. In fact, nationalism becomes important precisely when these things become artificial. Genuine peasants or tribesmen, however proficient at folk dancing, do not generally make good nationalists' (Gellner 1964: 162). Authorised national folk-culture can be purchased at airports or enjoyed by tourists in hotel cabarets. It is a matter of dress, music, artefacts almost anything which is vendable and carries no overt political meaning. The dancers who greet visiting potentates at Nairobi airport change from jeans and sweatshirts into specially manufactured tribal garb; if there was any risk that this could be mistaken for a celebration of Maasai political identity, the performances would soon be stopped. Some examples of national symbolism are bizarre; in 1965 the Uganda government decided that their country should have a National Drink: they might have chosen mwenge, the warm soupy banana beer of the Ganda and Soga peoples, or marwa, the rich millet beer sucked up through drinking-tubes in vast quantities by the Gisu, Teso and other northern peoples. Instead they chose waragi, the ubiquitous white spirit which is distilled from almost anything and known by a thousand other names throughout the world. Every day dozens of Ugandans were prosecuted for producing this liquor, which doubtless helped to make the state monopoly more lucrative. The refined, official version of waragi of course had no taste and banana was chosen as a suitably patriotic flavour - the essence being imported from the USA. Advertising jingles sang the praises of 'Uganda Waragi' and the liquor was dispensed at diplomatic parties, mercifully disguised, it is reported, in cocktails. Populism is about development. It 'springs from the tension between backward countries and more advanced ones, and from the tension between developed and backward parts of the same country . . . Populist 228

Populism movements appear in societies and social groups which are and have become aware of being peripheral to centres of power' (Stewart 1969: 181). The populist makes invidious comparisons between himself and 'his people' on the one hand, and big business or international power-blocs on the other. Populists tend to be jingoistic or isolationist, and 'as strategists and diplomats they are short-sighted and long-winded' (Wiles 1969:170). At the same time, their pursuit of political power and economic wealth obliges them to place their ideas within a wider, international frame of discourse. They often do this by seeking to domesticate some version of socialism: Nehru propounded an 'Indian Socialism', Nasser an 'Arab Socialism', and Nyerere, Senghor, Nkrumah and others various sorts of 'African Socialism' (Sigmund 1963). All of these sought to adjust vaguely marxist doctrines to conceptions of local history and social structure; as state ideologies they were concerned to make an authentic appeal to 'the people', but they were also concerned to build a second bridge out from the state itself into a wider fraternity of states (Arab, African, Asian) and into the international arena at large. From more orthodox perspectives, Third World populism is socialism manque. The precedent for this disparaging view may well be the victory of Bolshevik socialism over the socialism of the Narodniks. Macrae suggests that 'modern Marxism in its lurch towards the "young Marx" has become populistic' (1969: 163), but the orthodox Left remains very sceptical of Third World variants of socialism. Enthusiasm for the policies of Nyerere in Tanzania has depended very largely on the extent to which they are judged to be 'socialist' rather than 'merely populist'. It is clear that an ideology which places a high value of social homogeneity and the virtues of community cannot easily adjust to the notion of an historical role for social classes and the necessity of revolution: The populist asserts that there are no divisions in the community, or that if they are discernible, they are 'non-antagonistic'. Thus class-divisions can then be dismissed as external ('imperialist') intrusions, alien to the society. Ethnic differences can equally be dismissed as consequences of 'divide and rule' or as vestigial, disappearing legacies of the past ('tribalism' or 'feudalism'), though, of course, in this case, it is necessary to accept that ethnicity did divide society in the past: only now is a truly homogeneous society emerging. All these divisions, it is held, will soon disappear, leaving a united society. (Worsley 1967: 165)

Populism is an alternative to class-based ideologies. It thrives in developing countries because social classes are weak, and as an ideology it is threatened when the formation of social classes becomes subjectively and objectively more evident (Worsley 1967:164-5). The emergence of something approximating a bourgeoisie may prompt a 'relatively autonomous' state to increase its appeals to 'the people', but such appeals may be fruitless if 'the people' have formed, or are forming, a different view of their 229

Contradictions own identity. Here the fate of populism and of planning are very closely intertwined: class polarisation plays havoc with both. As a reformist ideology, populism relates very uneasily to historical materialist dogma. The heritage of the post-colonial states is decidedly un-revolutionary, and 'the people' have become habituated to external agencies taking the initiatives for change: 'To energize such populations, and to transform society without initiating disruptive social revolution, is the problem that non-revolutionary governments are continuously faced with' (Worsley 1967: 132). For Barrington Moore, the profoundly un-revolutionary history of India (and, implicitly, of many other postcolonial states) goes far towards explaining their stagnation and the failure of planned development today; although Moore cannot recommend the agony of revolution, the populism of Gandhi did little to alleviate the miseries of India - and little to facilitate the efforts of its planners. To Gandhi the task of village uplift seemed a nonpolitical one upon which all groups could agree and cooperate. Never did it occur to Gandhi that to maintain village India would condemn the mass of India's population to a life of squalor, ignorance, and disease . . . As is usually the case with backward-looking idealizations of peasant life, Gandhi's love of the village had antiurban and even anticapitalist overtones. (Moore 1967: 376)

Revolution may indeed be necessary for the awakening and the transformation of society, but revolutions do not in themselves reorganise society. They may make reform practicable, and it is here that planning and populism converge in a course of action. After the deluge in Russia and in China came the planned transformation of society, predicated on a new ideological bond between the state and 'the people'. Witnesses in the Third World have envied the strength of that bond, and have sought to simulate it; but they have been much less enthusiastic about the agonies which post-revolutionary reform has entailed. Its appeal to simple folk has given populism an appearance of naive rusticity. It is therefore odd that it should so often have derived its momentum from the reformist zeal of urban-based intellectuals. They, in attempting to build bridges between people and the state, have often found themselves alienated from both sides. Thus, Narodnichestvo 'was primarily a movement of intellectuals . . . pre-eminently an ideology about the peasantry, not one created by them, nor one rooted in the peasantry. It preached learning from, being guided by, the people, when everything in it was created by a segment of the urban intelligentsia' (Worsley 1969: 221). Pragmatic, eclectic, and notably devoid of longterm social ambitions, populism might better be described as a set of attitudes rather than an ideology. It seems particularly attractive to those who are disaffected with the grander ideologies of Right and Left; accord230

Populism ingly, it is viewed with scepticism by more orthodox liberals and marxists as a hotch-potch of incoherent political opinions, myopic, parochial, jingoistic, and very naive. At one time or another, these unflattering labels have been applied to anthropology. If we were to circumscribe prevailing political attitudes among anthropologists, we would probably end up with a very adequate description of populism: an ambivalent attitude to human progress and the predations of industrialism on society; a malaise about the relationship between poor people and strong states, and a desire to act as a voice for, if not an instrument of, the underprivileged mass; a nostalgic desire for the essentially rural community with its personal intimacy and closeness to nature; and a concern that change should build on these simple virtues rather than sweep them aside in a mood of revolutionary fervour. As we shall see in Chapter 6, such attitudes account for many of the difficulties anthropologists encounter when they take an active interest in planned development. They find themselves, to a large extent, apartipris in the contest between people and the state, and very confused when invited to act as an agent of the latter. An escape from this dilemma must proceed from a more thorough and critical inspection of current anthropological attitudes. Eventually we may be able to relinquish some of the shortcomings of populism, and develop a social science which can both propose and analyse plausible alternative images of society. Without such speculation our efforts to plan social change must remain enfeebled.

231

5 Malaysia - a case study

In this extended case study of Malaysia we shall consider, in the empirical context of one developing country, the issues raised in previous chapters. Malaysia has been more assiduous than many states in its pursuit of orderly development: in its experience we can trace the emerging structures and processes of planning, and observe the particular uses to which these have been put. Detailed reference to the activities of the Federal Land Development Authority will indicate the relationship between planning processes and organisations of the kind discussed in Chapter 3. It will also help to account for the instrumentality of planning in the fraught relationship between the state and a sharply divided society. We focus on the construction of ideology and policy during a period of national crisis, and on the renewed threat of an uncertain and unmanageable future as the period of programmed change draws to a close.

Notes

Approximate currency equivalents 1947-72 US$1 = £1 = 1973-80 US$1 = £1 =

approximately 3 Malaysian dollars (M$3) approximately M$5.5 approximately M$2.4 approximately M$4.5

References For ease of reference the following abbreviations are used: First Malaysia Plan, 1966-70 - IMP Second Malaysia Plan, 1971-5 - 2 MP Mid-Term Review of the Second Malaysia Plan - 2MPMTR Third Malaysia Plan, 1976-80 - 3MP Fourth Malaysia Plan, 1981-5 - 4MP Publications of the Department of National Unity - DNU Publications of the Implementation Coordination Unit - ICU 232

Introduction Spelling of the Malay language

In 1972 a new transliteration of the national language (Bahasa Malaysia) was adopted in the interests of greater uniformity with the national language of Indonesia. Both old and new forms therefore appear in this text.

Introduction Among mixed-economy countries, Malaya probably has the most effective comprehensive system for planning at state, district and local levels. (Waterston 1965: 458) Malaysia has been more 'successful' than most LDC's in following a 'western' mode of development and yet still absolute poverty is widespread and many inequalities are increasing. (Gibbons et al. 1980:211)

This chapter seeks to expound within the context of one particular country the issues raised in previous chapters. We shall focus on Malaysia, and on a sequence of national development plans. To trace these through from the level of ideas to that of concrete activities, we shall concentrate on one development agency, the Federal Land Development Authority, scrutinising its relationships with the state on the one hand, and its 'settler'communities on the other. We shall consider how development is planned in Malaysia, and why; we shall examine the ways this country has given expression to the global institutions identified in earlier chapters, and the ways in which these institutions have become a distinctive part of Malaysian experience. Malaysia provides a vivid example of the problems of achieving growth with equity, and of reconciling a long-term commitment to liberal democratic ideals with an urgent need for economic change and political control. One of the most conspicuous functions of the Malaysian state has been its mediating role in an ethnically divided population. In the face of potent and enduring sub-national identities, centralised planning has become the principal device in the much publicised pursuit of 'National Unity'. By greatly expanding the state apparatus and the power of officials who organise and execute it, planning has emphasised the potency of a 'relatively autonomous' state. At the political centre, power has been balanced between the leaders of a multi-party Alliance and a cadre of senior officials. This apex rests on an ever-expanding administrative and commercial middle class, a category nurtured by planned development and with solidarities which cross-cut ethnic boundaries. However, below these ranks racial violence - compounded by growing sentiments of class deprivation - poses a threat which the state has sought to buy off by diverting the benefits of economic growth to the poorest 233

MALAYSIA PERLIS

*o PENANG§p

119°E

Northern development r e g i o n -high p r i o r i t y Selangor region -low priority 2»N

4-

Malacca

1O16E

MAJOR PROJECT AREAS

Johore Bharu~'\ SINGAPORE

100

234

150 mites

FLDA projects mentioned in the text

Introduction citizens. As planners, politicians and World Bank counsellors have repeatedly declared, 'redistribution with growth' has a particular meaning and urgency in Malaysia: it is pursued not simply in the hope of national progress but in the interests of national survival. Like all other modern states, Malaysia faces outwards into international arenas, as well as inwards to its own polity; its progress has been affected profoundly by changing patterns of aid and trade, by colonial rule and decolonisation, by the turbulent politics of the Southeast Asian region, the growth of international agencies, and by the conflicting ideologies and rationales in the social science of planning. Malaysian history reveals the ways in which international doctrines and techniques of development have been 'domesticated'. National planning was 'imported' by expatriate officials, and subsequently by Malaysians trained in the metropolitan countries. Its efficiency and adaptability has been much admired: information and control systems have acquired a high degree of sophistication, and policies have responded promptly to international preoccupations like the participation of women, conservation of the environment, and care of the disabled (3MP: 103; 3MP: 21827; 4MP: 369-81). Nevertheless, it is clear that, over time, the familiar international vocabulary of growth, equity, integration, democracy, etc., has acquired some specifically Malaysian meanings, and that the practical experience of a country which takes planning so seriously has in turn had some 'feedback' effect on more generalised approaches to development. As a resettlement project paradigm the Federal Land Development Authority has probably become as influential as the Gezira scheme or the Tennessee Valley Authority. This celebrity has brought a flood of overseas visitors, catered for by 'some of the most expensive filing clerks-cum-tourist guides in the country' (Wafa 1972: 208). FLDA was set up in 1957 as a small administrative body to help finance local projects, but has since become 'the largest and most important organisation in Malaysian agriculture' (Meerman 1979: 242), a huge conglomerate enterprise. It has devised a complex, replicable 'package' which has become one of the standard building blocks in Malaysian development. The experience of FLDA reveals much about how national policies are translated into effect, how particular forms of organisation have emerged, and how planning procedures become elaborated and routinised. It illustrates the capacity for a para-statal agency to acquire a life and a momentum of its own, and to exert a reciprocal influence on central planning processes. Critics observe that the Authority is rapidly relinquishing its role as simply a means for development: the earlier notion that FLDA should work towards its own redundancy by developing land for transfer to 235

Malaysia - a case study smallholders has yielded to a commitment to the expansion and perpetuation of FLDA as a productive enterprise in its own right. The experience of FLDA reveals many of the problems of mediating between the will of the state and the welfare of the people. The increasing strength of FLDA is in part a response to the deepening world recession, which has obliged the Authority to take firmer control of production and, thereby, the lives of the settlers. For many of the latter, the benefits of a reliable income continue to outweigh the costs of encroaching proletarianisation, but a vicious circle now looms: efforts to intensify production to ensure sufficient material welfare to keep internal dissent at bay may actually exacerbate internal dissent. In Malaysia in the 1980s there is a growing opinion at the centre that the state must strengthen its grip on society. Officials are increasingly preoccupied with problems of political control and the threat of renewed communist insurgency. In these circumstances, the dream that by 1990 planned development will be redundant, that the country will have come to depend on the invisible equilibrating hand of the market, seems increasingly far-fetched. Acknowledging this, a growing number of officials express the view that the strength of Malaysian planning will be the country's saving grace, the only rational, albeit draconian, alternative to chaos. The emergence of pluralism, the state, and planning

It is now almost a platitude to remark that the major obstacle to national development in Malaysia is the consolidation of major ethnic divisions within the population. Malaysia is the paradigm of the 'plural society' and the fact that almost the entire population can be categorised as 'Malay', 'Chinese' or 'Indian' is a major premise in the political and economic affairs of the country, and impinges constantly on the daily lives of ordinary people. 'They mix but do not combine . . . with different sections of the community living side by side, but separately, within the same political unit' (Furnivall 1948: 304). As a national predicament Malaysian pluralism is still blamed vociferously on the British, but it is painfully evident that twenty-five years of independent statehood have done little to dissolve the monolithic distinctions. Mercantile interests carried the British East India Company into Southeast Asia towards the end of the eighteenth century. At this time there were less than a million people on the Malayian peninsula, most of them living in a series of small riverain states separated from each other by large expanses of jungle. Today, the descendants of these precolonial inhabitants are described officially as 'Bumiputra\ 'Sons of the soil', and in law and public policy they enjoy special privileges which are denied to 236

The emergence of planning Malaysians of Chinese or Indian extraction. Colloquially they are described as 'Malays' - a term which disguises their diverse origins in. Java, Sumatra, the Celebes and Thailand; in the very distant past the 'proto-Malays' were probably immigrants from southern China. Today the Malay language and Islam are the main bases of the Malay identity, which finds expression in the self-conscious notion of adat, Malay culture and morality. This, reinforced by the characteristic political organisation of the states, serves to distinguish the Malays as a national grouping (bangsa) apart from the other races (Wilson 1967: 45). In subjective stereotype, Malay-ness is halus, refined, while anything else is either kasar, coarse, or kotor, dirty (op. cit.: 36). Malay-ness is also characteristically rural: cities, in which other ethnic groups now predominate, are regarded as the antithesis of adat (op. cit.: 45). The Malays see themselves as most sharply distinguished from the immigrant Chinese population. The Chinese have had an entrepreneurial presence in the region for centuries, but their numbers increased enormously under the influence of British rule. In the mid-nineteenth century their principal interests were trade and tin-mining, carried out under licence from (and sometimes in economic collaboration with) the local Sultans (Gullick 1958: 129). With the development of rubber as a cash crop in the last two decades of the century, Chinese immigration accelerated: in the two years 1899-1900 an estimated 100,000 arrived in the Federated Malay States (Ooi 1963: 110). The turnover of migrants was immense, and it was generally assumed that the influx of labour would lead to little permanent settlement. Although twelve million Chinese entered Malaya between 1900 and 1940, only two and a half million were resident at the outbreak of the Second World War, but these constituted 44% of the population (op. cit.: 113). Although the British valued the Chinese entrepreneurial spirit, which the Malays appeared to lack, they were unencouraging about rights of settlement and citizenship. The establishment of the People's Republic in China in 1949 helped to make it evident that most of the Chinese would have to be accommodated permanently. The smallest of the three main ethnic segments consists of Indians and Ceylonese, mainly Tamil-speaking but including Gujaratis, Marwaris, Sikhs and other groups. The southerners were imported in large numbers to man the European rubber estates (again in contrast to the Malays they had a reputation throughout the Empire for industriousness and amenability) . Although for the first half of this century the immigrant labourers stayed on average only two or three years, at Independence settled Indians constituted about a tenth of the population. Caught in the crossfire between the Malays and the Chinese, the Indians often seem to have the fewest privileges and to be identified racially against their will. How237

Malaysia - a case study ever, many Indians have for long been established in government service and commerce, and as a 'third party' have exercised a moderating role in ethnic conflict. Between 1910 and 1980 the population of Malaya increased from 1.5 millions to 13.5 millions. Althugh it is not overpopulated by Asian standards, the annual growth rate has exceeded 3%, and a population of 16.2 millions is projected for 1985. The changing proportions of Malays, Chinese and Indians in the population are indicated in Figure 5.1. The plural society in Malaya was nurtured and ruled by the agents of colonial government, bequeathing to the post-colonial state distinctive political structures and procedures, as well as distinctive political problems. In his critical study of British Imperialism (1937) the American Rupert Emerson remarked on the relative autonomy of the colonial state in Malaya, even with regard to British commercial interests: 'Government moves in some part with a momentum of its own, and since it is a non-profit-making agency it cannot see eye to eye at all points with those whose sole concern is profits' (1937: 470). Official attitudes to the Chinese were laissez faire - after all, their contribution to the economic growth of the country was unmistakable. According to Emerson, colonial civil servants took refuge in their ethic of 'neutrality': 'the men who constitute colonial government are civil servants trained for their administrative and political roles, feeling themselves the inheritors of a significant - if brief and somewhat unreal - tradition of integrity and independence' (op. cit.: 474). Nevertheless, they fostered and formed an uneasy political alliance with a rising Malay elite: as early as 1921 a Malay Administrative Fig. 5.1. Changing proportions of Malays, Chinese and Indians in the population of West Malaysia (Malaya) since 1884 (Sources: Purcell 1948; Husin Ali 1975: 23; Ratnam 1965: 9-10) Malays 507. Chinese

^^ ^^^ locally- born '"" Chinese

207. 107.

Indians ....• 1900

238

locally-born Indians 1920

19&D

1960

1980

The emergence of planning Service was established which paved the way for Malay control of the bureaucracy at independence. Meanwhile, the Chinese had proved quick to take advantage of a relatively open economy and by the middle of this century a flourishing entrepreneurial class was making its presence and its power felt. It was on an alliance between them and the Malay bureaucrats that the government of independent Malaysia was built. Early British efforts at planned development in Malaya were of a rudimentary and remedial nature, and directed mainly at the rural Malays. Government was greatly exercised by the inadequacy of domestic rice supplies: in the mid-1930s 60% of the rice consumed in Malaya was imported, mainly from Siam and India (Emerson 1937: 42). Attempts to promote drainage and irrigation schemes were renewed after the war and imports had been reduced to 45% by Independence. By 1974 the Malaysian government's concentrated efforts (fostered by fear of dependence on politically vulnerable neighbours) had reduced this proportion to just 10% (Meerman 1979: 240). National planning measures date from 1946 when an Economic Development Committee was set up in response to the provisions of the Colonial Development and Welfare Act (see p. 19). The Committee consisted of a number of departmental heads under the chairmanship of the Economic Adviser, placing the machinery of planning very firmly in the hands of the bureaucrats. At this early stage planning was very much of the piecemeal 'shopping list' sort, and the 'Plan' for 1950-5 was a rudimentary list of investment projects. However, an important move was the establishment in 1950 of the Rural and Industrial Development Authority (RID A) whose main concern was promoting the economic interests of the Malays; it became a semiautonomous Authority in 1954, the precursor of many other state agencies, including FLDA. 'The major impetus to development planning was given by a large World Bank Mission which visited the country in 1954' (Snodgrass 1980: 47). The Mission's report (IBRD 1955) provided an authoritative basis for the First Malayan Plan (1956-60). True to the spirit of the times, it advocated measures for rapid economic growth, and stressed the importance of techniques and institutions for planning and implementation (see pp. 18ff.). It pointed to the dangers of dependence on rubber and tin, and urged agricultural diversification and increased investment in manufacturing; it argued for the need to promote private investment (in 1958 a Pioneer Industries Ordinance granted tax exemption on profits for up to five years); and it drew attention to the rapidly expanding population, and the need to release the abundant supply of forest land for agricultural development. The establishment of the Federal Land Development Authority (FLDA) in 1956 was a prompt response to this last suggestion. Malaysia's present planning machinery owes much to the advice of the 239

Malaysia - a case study 1955 World Bank report. An Economic Secretariat, which later became the Economic Planning Unit (EPU), was made responsible to a Technical Advisory Committee of senior civil servants from a variety of government departments, a body which has been perpetuated in the highly influential National Development Planning Committee (NDPC - see Figure 5.4). Ultimate responsibility for planning was vested in the cabinet-like Economic Committee of the Executive Council. For the period of the two Malayan Plans (1955-65) planning was firmly in the hands of expatriate advisers. The Chief Economist and head of the planning unit was E.K. Fisk, an Oxford graduate whose writings reveal a preoccupation with economic growth and somewhat draconian views about how the Malay peasantry should be induced to participate in the 'advanced sectors' (Fisk 1963). In the years up to 1960 planned development was severely constrained by the protracted communist insurgency - officially described as 'The Emergency'. During the Depression years of the 1930s a large proportion of the Chinese population had been obliged to withdraw from the towns, tin mines and rubber plantations and seek land for subsistence cultivation, often by encroaching on Malay reservations and forest areas. During the Japanese occupation (1942-5) many more Chinese were obliged to turn to the land, and became the main strength of the Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). The restoration of British rule did little to remedy their plight and the skills in guerrilla warfare which they had acquired were soon pitted against colonial rule. From 1948 onwards security forces exceeding 90,000 men (British National Servicemen and Malay recruits) were built up to contain the insurrection. In a dramatic campaign to break up support for the guerrillas, General Briggs organised the relocation of some 580,000 rural dwellers, mostly Chinese, into 536 'New Villages', distributed mainly along the western side of the Malayan peninsula (Ooi 1963: 167-8). In 1954, 303 of the New Villages were classified as permanent and many of them, with their army-camp layout, remain to this day (see Strauch 1981a, 1981b). The importance of the New Village programme, both in Malaysia and for other countries looking for efficient ways of organising rural development, was noted by the World Bank Mission: 'This operation, involving the resettlement of about 10% of the total population of the Federation and provision of basic services, was a remarkable achievement. Hardship was lessened by the coincidence of the resettlement with the rubber and tin boom, which enabled many of the resettled persons to find employment and high wages' (IBRD 1955: 320). FLDA officials are still very reluctant to acknowledge the influence of the New Village programme on their own schemes; for them even the word 'resettlement' has been corrupted, and the term 'land development' is still preferred. FLDA 240

The emergence of planning 'settlers' (Peneroka, a pioneer, one who opens up new land for settlement) are seen as voluntary participants in an economic and social welfare project and, although many aspects of scheme organisation are reminiscent of the New Villages, the militaristic parallel is anathema. The Emergency' had many other important consequences for the development of Malaysia. It established an almost exclusively Malay army and police force, weakened the credibility of British rule, and hastened moves towards Independence. It also made an issue of national loyalty among the Chinese, and created pressure for a democratic liberal constitution for the country; it 'served to weaken the ideology of the economic left and thus to strengthen Malaysian commitment to a free market economy' (Ness 1967: 61). It also fostered an Alliance of the three main ethnically based political parties, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) and the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC). The leaders of all three parties were united in their desire for independent statehood and their fear of continuing communist insurrection. The Alliance was formed in 1952, became the first elected government in 1955, and since Independence in 1957 has proved to be a remarkably durable basis for Malaysian government. The Alliance engineered 'The Bargain of 1957', Malaysia's Independence Constitution. More liberal citizenship provisions and greater political involvement for the Chinese were traded off against certain economic safeguards for the Malays and the consolidation of their political privileges. Although, at a time of national crisis a dozen years later, the Prime Minister, Tungku Abdul Rahman, was to protest that 'Our Constitution was a national compact binding us all together' (Milne 1970: 564), in reality it was regarded by all parties as an expensive compromise rather than an expression of consensus. The Indians probably got the poorest part of The Bargain, having neither a political nor an economic advantage to trade. Perhaps the most important gain for the Malays was to secure a minimum of two thirds of the civil service posts; in 1969 85.1% were in fact occupied by Malays (Husin Ali 1975: 34n). At Independence, a Malay elite thus assumed control of a strong and relatively autonomous state apparatus. The civil servants discovered by James C. Scott (1968) in the early 1960s were very conservative, tightly disciplined and deeply suspicious of the methods and motives of politicians. In Scott's view, 'The bureaucratization of the regime tended to routinize political decisions - to divert what would have otherwise been political clashes into questions of legal authority and the interpretation of regulations' (op. cit.: 215). 'If higher civil servants see themselves as a paternal ruling group', observed Scott, 'they do not greatly distort reality' (op. cit.: 230). With good reason, Malaysia has often been described as an 'administrative state', 241

Malaysia - a case study 'political and participative organs' playing an indirect role in the formation of public policy (Esman 1972: 62). The core of the state apparatus is the Malaysian Administrative and Diplomatic Service (MADS; formerly the Malayan Civil Service). A carefully selected and trained cadre of 'generalists', MADS officers have increased from about 1,300 in 1972 to 2,300 in 1980 (Omar 1980: 62). Government ministries, Agencies and Departments have separate staffs, but MADS officers are very mobile and are drafted in to take all the most senior posts. The elitism of MADS officers is thus a cause of vexation to other civil servants, who see their career opportunities pre-empted. MADS officers all seem to know each other, or know of each other; they take an acute interest in their relative progress up through the salariat from Timescale' to 'Superscale' and into the rarified heights to Staff III, II and I. Progress is marked by increments which take the officer from M$2,500 a month on Timescale to M$10,000 for Staff I (the Chief Secretary to the Government), and by the acquisition of more elegant official cars and resonant titles like 'Director General'. All the most important officials concerned with planned development are in MADS, their influence extending outwards from the Prime Minister's Department into the substantive ministries and the most important government agencies (see Figure 5.4). For Tun Abdul Razak, Malaysia's second and most influential Prime Minister, a 'neutral' civil service in the colonial tradition may have provided efficient 'care and maintenance' for the state, but was certainly inadequate as an instrument of social, economic and political change. On his appointment as Minister of National and Rural Development in 1959 he demanded 'a change of attitude in the hearts and minds of all government employees', urging them to become 'a vital, lively and loyal group of human beings, dedicated not merely to their monthly pay packets, but rather to the development and service of their country' (Shaw 1976:131). From his own experience, Tun Razak found the bureaucracy potent but politically inert, and his remedy was to expand and proliferate the state apparatus and to fill it with younger and more adventurous men. The internal politics which this generated was seen as a competitive stimulus. Omar has pointed out that many organisations have been formed to 'brace' others with similar or overlapping functions, thus Perbadanan Nasional (PERNAS, the National Corporation) was formed to ginger up MARA, the agency charged with 'uplifting' the Bumiputra peoples; the Universiti Kebangsaan was set up to shadow the established University of Malaya; and 'Farmers' associations (fostered by the Agricultural Department) were set up side-by-side with the cooperative societies (fostered by the Cooperative Department) when the latter proved to be less effective in mobilising farmers for greater productivity' (Omar 1980: 15). By the 242

The emergence of planning early 1970s the costs of this bureaucratic sprawl were becoming evident in diminished executive capacity, very reminiscent of problems in the Soviet Union (see Nove 1969: 83-4). Figure 5.2 seeks to illustrate the relationships which have developed among the agents of the state, the emergent middle class and the major ethnic segments in Malaysia. The intention is to suggest how economic, political and ethnic power is balanced at the centre. A conspicuous expression of this is the multi-party Alliance. Husin Ali has remarked that 'within the upper classes there has been a strong tendency for the members to be integrated inter-ethnically. The task of governing, as well as the need to maintain political unity so that they can be sufficiently strong to remain in power, hold at least the top-level leadership of the Alliance Fig. 5.2. Malaysia: a balance of power, c. 1970

"middle class1

state agents 243

Malaysia - a case study together' (1975: 34). The Alliance, particularly through the Central Committee of the majority UMNO, had developed intricate relationships with the agents of the state, but the latter remain pre-eminent for historical and other reasons. Around Independence the flow of officials out from the civil service into government was striking: in the mid-1960s half of the cabinet was drawn from the bureaucracy (Milne & Mauzy 1977: 277) and it is no accident that all four successive Prime Ministers (occupants of the most important pivotal role) were former civil servants. A reciprocal flow of politicians into officialdom is legally resisted in the strongest terms as a flagrant violation of the 'neutrality' of the administration: however, care is taken to ensure that decision-making bodies at every level are well salted with Alliance politicians. No less important has been the flow of senior officials out into the business world. On retirement at fifty-five most senior Malay civil servants are pursued by private (Chinese) companies with generous offers of board membership. Middle class Malaysians are very proud of the degree of ethnic integration which has been achieved at the political centre, and often lament the potentially explosive communal loyalties which divide the mass of the population. However, it is plain that the Alliance remains fundamentally an inter-ethnic arrangement, and that ethnicity is kept alive and manipulated by various regional interests, by class fractions and by the agents of the state in the process of sustaining a very delicate economic and political equilibrium. More than anything, that balance has depended on high economic growth (see Young 1980: 71), which has in turn depended on a mixture of good fortune and efficient planning. It has also depended on some rigorous control over the distribution of gains and this, again, has been achieved by decisive planned intervention by the state. Federation, centralisation and the emergence of FLDA

The centralisation of Federal government was achieved despite a protracted history of fragmentary political association among the component states of present-day Malaysia, and an erratic pattern of relationships between them and the colonial, and later the post-colonial, state. Before 1874 when British Protection was extended to them the Malay states had an established hierarchic political organisation, focussed on the power of the 'Sultan', the Yang di-Pertuan Besar ('He who is made Lord'), a ruler selected from a royal patrilineage (Gullick 1958: 21). The states were divided into geo-political sub-units, Daerah, which are perpetuated in the administrative districts of today. At Merdeka (Independence) on 31 July 1957 Malaysia became a constitutional monarchy with each state Sultan taking a four-year turn of being 'King' - Yang di-Pertuan Agong ('He who is made supreme'). He presides over an elected bicameral legislature and 244

The emergence ofFLDA a Federal bureaucracy which leaves little room for the governments of component states. Shortly after Independence arrangements were in hand to enlarge Malaysia with the inclusion of Singapore, Brunei, Sarawak and North Borneo (Sabah). An important pretext was the formation of a united bastion against communist insurgency, a fear felt as keenly in Singapore with its Chinese majority as in the other, Islamic Malay states. Brunei opted out of negotiations and the enlarged Federation of 1963 was soon threatened by Singapore's fears that it would be swamped by the Malay interests. Singapore seceded in 1965, and the incorporation of Sarawak and Sabah has proved slow and at times politically fraught; they are poorly integrated into the Second and Third Malaysia Plans, and are conspicuous by their extensive separate treatment in the Fourth. Their bonds with Malaysia were reinforced by the period of Confrontation with Sukarno's leftist government in Indonesia, which began in 1963 and, until it subsided in 1965, did much to galvanise the identity of the new Malaysian state. Although the Federal government is punctilious in its pretence that the states are still the basis of national authority, it is plain that their powers are very limited (Beaglehole 1976: 24). 'The Constitution of Malaysia allocates the majority of functions to the federal and concurrent lists. State governments in West Malaysia are left mainly with religion, land, agriculture, local government, and some shared functions probably the most important being public works' (op. cit.: 78). The complexities and ambiguities of Federal-state relationships are well illustrated in the role of District Officer: as in so many other post-colonial states he remains a vital link between 'the people' and central government, but in formal terms he remains a state, not a Federal official. Nevertheless, he is 'increasingly involved more in federal than he is in state-originated programmes, playing the role more of administrator of a national programme of development and less that of a local state official' (op. cit.: 97). The diminishing importance of the states can be seen quite clearly in patterns of public expenditure: 'In spite of being a federation, Malaysia followed budgetary practices of a highly centralized state' (Meerman 1979: 327). In 1970-2 the Federal government accounted for 85.7% of the total public resources allocated, the states only 12.4% and the municipalities 1.9%. Figures for the whole decade of the 1970s show a reduction of the states' share to 9.8% (4MP: 116). Omar concludes that 'state governments are implementors of federal socio-economic policies and programs' and notes that 'Federal policymakers exercise more de facto powers than formally provided for in the Federal Constitution' (1980: 7-8). The State Economic Development Boards, set up in the late 1960s, suffer from a lack of professional and 245

Malaysia - a case study technical staff largely because of the centripetal attractions of the Federal agencies; their Boards of Management are often ineffectual, their finances are weak and they are much exposed to problems of maladministration and corruption (Puthucheary 1979: 198). Regional inequalities are still conspicuous. In 1976, 59.2% of the population of Kelantan lived below the official poverty line, compared with 55.1% in Kedah, 38.7% in Perak, 21.4% in Selangor, and 6.7% in the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur (4MP: 44). Attempts have been made in the National Plans to channel resources into the poorer states; this has been done through the allocation of Federal funds for specific projects, but in the Third and Fourth Malaysia Plans (1976-80, 1981-5) new 'Macro-planning Regions' have been identified (see map, p. 234), giving the Northeast a high rating for development expenditure and Central Region a low rating. The Federal attack on regional inequalities has been carried out much less through the agency of the states than through the large Federal organisations (see pp. 130 ff.). In its 1955 report the World Bank Mission evoked the Gezira scheme in the Sudan (see p. 52) as a model for largescale rural development in Malaysia: The essence of this scheme is that the state provides the land and the water, the tenants are responsible for the cultivation operations, and a state-owned but autonomous board provides agricultural supervision and management as well as seasonal finance for the tenants, and is responsible for harvesting and marketing the crop . . . A scheme organized in this way secures the advantages of efficient agricultural management and large-scale marketing, while avoiding the disadvantages of the plantation system. (IBRD 1955: 317)

The Gezira model inspired the Muda rice development scheme established in the state of Kedah during the 1960s, and also influenced the FLDA pattern of land development. The Federal Land Development Authority was set up in 1956 to help the states 'release' supplies of uncultivated land for development, mainly by channelling Federal funds to state-organised schemes. Some of these were intended to provide settled farmers with additional 'fringe' land for commercial agriculture; others, involving the alienation of larger blocks of land, were intended for un- or under-employed youths. The incapacity of the states to organise and manage these schemes soon became evident and three years later FLDA was given the right to develop land directly; shortly after it took over for remedial purposes schemes started by the state Land Boards. By 1959 FLDA was administering eleven schemes and twenty-one others were in varying stages of planning (Ooi 1963: 144). Only the state of Kelantan resisted these intrusions with any determination: the state government 'feared that by allowing the federal government to administer large land schemes, the state would lose control of its most useful asset'. As a Pan 246

The emergence of FLDA Malay Islamic Party (PMIP) stronghold it was also felt that 'these schemes would not only be used for purposes of Alliance party patronage but would also alter the racial balance in the state by including non-Malay settlers' (Beaglehole 1976: 86n). It was many years before Kelantan yielded its land to FLDA, with the result that although its impoverished population has provided a large proportion of the settlers on schemes in other states, land development has proceeded much more slowly in Kelantan itself. The expansion of FLDA coincided with the Malaysian government's preoccupation with rapid economic growth, as expressed in the First and Second Malayan Plans. FLDA also expressed a move to 'stimulate economic development with complex organizations . . . to use the central administration to stimulate economic development' (Ness 1967: 82). Such para-statal agencies enabled the Federal government to cut through bureaucratic obstacles and avoid 'the unhealthy play of politics in the new state' (op. cit.: 173). Technically, their major justification was the economies of scale which they could achieve: Snodgrass observes that 'one reason why FELDA succeeded . . . was that it was able to cope with the troublesome fact that the land with greatest unexploited agricultural potential, though extensive, was concentrated in a few states, mainly on the East Coast, while the population with the greatest land hunger were to be found in the other West Coast states' (1980:178). At least as significant was the 'fit' between the large-scale organisation of land development schemes and the national decision to promote the production of oilpalm. Competition from synthetics served to reduce the acreage under rubber from about two million acres in 1950 to one and a half million in 1972 (Thoburn 1977: 73). A crop which has proved itself adaptable to estate and smallholder agriculture in Malaysia, rubber remains an important interest for FLDA- accounting for 35% of planted land in 1976 (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 50). In Malaysia oilpalm has been exclusively an estate crop, pioneered by European plantations, and it is presumed that at every stage of production from planting to processing there are significant economies of scale. On the West coast of Africa oilpalm has for centuries been a smallholder crop, and there is no obvious reason why it could not have been developed on this basis in Malaysia. Palm oil became one of Malaysia's major cash earners, particularly during the years 1971-6; over the decade of the 1970s there was a fourfold increase in production (4MP: 19-20) and the total acreage increased from around 100,000 in the 1950s to 1,324,000 in 1974 (Snodgrass 1980: 173). FLDA schemes accounted for a third of this, and there can be no doubt that the extensive,rigorouslymanaged, estate style of production was responsible for the palm oil boom in the 1970s (op. cit.: 174). In 1959 FLDA came under the aegis of Tun Razak's new Ministry of 247

Malaysia - a case study National and Rural Development, and was soon infected by his organisational fervour. Two years later he appointed Technical Committees 'to coordinate all services required in FELDA schemes at Federal level' (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 9). The Ministries of Education, Health and Agriculture, the PWD and the Police, the Treasury and officials of the EPU could all be brought together to produce and reproduce the FLDA 'Package': The assumption of direct federal control was the first step in the evolution of a standard method of operation for FELDA. The eventual achievement of this standard method provided the key to FELDA's success because it became a blueprint which could be followed over and over again, with only minor variations, by middle-level settlement administrators. (Snodgrass 1980: 179)

In its early schemes FLD A devised a series of sophisticated technical procedures for establishing the oilpalm and rubber crops, and then 'implanting' the settler population. After careful physical surveys private contractors are employed to clear areas of jungle; nurseries for the crop are then set up, and plantation then starts in a sequence of four or five phases for each scheme. The staggered operation provides a means whereby what is learned in one phase can be fed into the organisation of the next - details such as controlling soil erosion, siting houses or building access roads. The settler population is likewise installed in phases, which helps incidentally to give the schemes a crude 'social structure'. During the period of the First Malaysia Plan (1966-70) FLDA exceeded its land development targets by 25%, and for the Second Malaysia Plan was scheduled to develop 55,000 acres a year (2MP: 133). The early success of its 'package' greatly increased FLD A's licence to act as a 'semi-autonomous authority': it was considered sufficient to specify targets in terms of acreage and the number of families to be settled, leaving the details to FLDA. The influence of the Authority was consolidated by the role it was required to play in the Regional Masterplans which were devised to exploit the extensive forest lands in Johore and Pahang states. In the vast Pahang Tenggara project FLDA was charged with the development of 407,717 acres (4 MP: 110), and to control this undertaking the World Bank recommended that a separate Division of the Authority should be established in 1968. This initiated extensive reorganisation of the FLDA bureaucracy: in 1971, on the advice of an American management consultant firm, a new Budget and Planning Department was set up, Regional Offices under Area Controllers were established, and other organisational changes made. With its increased responsibilities and greater autonomy, FLDA expanded enormously during the 1970s: 'The eleven departments, six subsidiary corporations, three subsidiary companies, ten regional administrations, and 209 scheme offices in 1976 indicate a conglomerate structure' (Shamsul Bahrin & 248

The First Malaysia Plan Perera 1977: 129). FLDA diversified its operations from production and processing into marketing, through its fully owned subsidiary FELMA, and into manufacturing, through the joint-venture Felda Oil Products (FOP). 'In early 1977 FELDA and its subsidiary corporations employed 8,994 staff and workers which is in marked contrast to its ten employees in 1958' (ibid.). In 1977 FLDA established its own Land Development Institute at Trolak, which provided in the first three years training for 3,885 senior and middle-level staff (4MP: 272). The Authority was now established as one of the largest and most powerful state enterprises in Malaysia. Tun Razak and the First Malaysia Plan

There is no doubt that the Chinese business community was largely satisfied with the economic growth strategies of the two Malayan Plans (195565), which encouraged investment and new enterprise and were conservative in monetary and fiscal policies. However, on grounds of redistribution the Malays were less satisfied, and during the course of the 1959 elections made it clear to the ruling Alliance that they expected development policies to cater specifically for the rural (Malay) majority. It was even argued that the New Village programme had discriminated in favour of the Chinese (Shaw 1976: 128). Accordingly, Tun Razak, then Deputy Prime Minister, was placed in charge of a new Ministry of National and Rural Development and given the responsibility of redressing the balance. Tun Abdul Razak came from the relatively poor state of Pahang and was of Bugis stock - immigrant mercenary warriors from the Celebes. He trained as a lawyer in London, where he joined the Labour Party and the Fabians. Later he claimed that his stay in Britain taught him the value of national unity based on 'common culture and the use of a single language' (Shaw 1976: 74). In 1951 he was elected Deputy President of UMNO and became Minister of Education in Tunku Abdul Rahman's Alliance government in 1957. Before his election to parliament he worked as a District Officer under Sir Gerald Templer, the High Commissioner in charge of Malaya during much of the Emergency. Ness observes that Templer: provided a pattern of leadership that is still deeply engrained in Malaya. Templer was an extremely forceful man who used widely, but well, the almost dictatorial powers he held. With a loathing of red tape and excuses, he was strong in his demand for results and in his impatience with incompetent staff. One of his great admirers was a young Malay civil servant from Pahang, Abdul Razak, who later emulated Templer's leadership techniques in implementing Malaya's rural development programme. (Ness 1967: 60) 249

Malaysia - a case study Time was one of Tun Razak's main fixations: wasting it was the 'cardinal sin of some development planners'. It was 'not only a commodity as valuable and scarce as money, but one which lost was irrecoverable'. He also liked to remind officials that in a five-year plan period there were only about 1,000 full working days - none of which should be wasted (Shaw 1976: 133-4). At the heart of Tun Razak's new approach to planning was the Operations Room, which sought to use 'for peaceful development purposes some of the successful military operations techniques used during the Emergency in 1948-60' (IMP: 93). For its technical efficiency, the National Operations Room was the international planner's dream come true. It brought together for observation, assessment and immediate remedial action, information about development projects at every level throughout the country. The main source of information was the Red Books, linked to the National Plan, king size volumes each containing a number of maps, every one of which was concerned with some facet of an individual current project, such as access roads, system of drainage, the buildings already completed or planned, and other essential aspects requiring constant checking. These books were always prepared and maintained in triplicate, so that one copy could be kept in the District Office of the area actually administering and working the scheme, a second in the operations room of the state in which this was located, and the third in that Federal Operations Planning Room in Kuala Lumpur which, being adjacent to his office in the Prime Minister's Department, was under Abdul Tazak's direct personal supervision. (Shaw 1976: 132-3)

The activities of other government organisations were also charted, green markers indicating that they were ahead of schedule, red if they were behind. Throughout the country, other Operations Rooms were linked to this nerve centre; in Ministries, State Agencies and Districts there were (and still are) complicated displays on sliding boards in special rooms where meetings were held, decisions made and progress monitored. A senior official on tour, often Tun Razak himself, could be briefed rapidly and efficiently and make snap decisions to expedite matters. Foreign planning experts like Albert Waterston were greatly impressed (1965: 361). The centripetal flow of information and control has come to characterise Malaysia's 'integrated development planning' organisation. Since 1959 all the most important institutions concerned with the planning and monitoring of development have gravitated into the Prime Minister's office (see p. 89 for a discussion of this centralising tendency). The fate of the original National and Rural Development Ministry is itself a case in point; from the outset it was afflicted by 'ambiguities and unresolved power struggles' and 'never gained responsibility for overall development 250

The search for a National Ideology planning' (Snodgrass 1980: 167). It soon disappeared in a cabinet reshuffle and its most important functions were absorbed by other institutions - mainly those in the Prime Minister's Department - confirming Arthur Lewis' dictum that separate ministerial status is the death of a planning agency (1966: 244-5). In 1961 the revamped Economic Planning Unit (EPU) and the National Development Planning Committee (NDPC) were both part of the PM's Department and were in effective control of national planning. As the official parent body of the EPU, the NDPC was responsible for formulating and reviewing all Plans, making recommendations on the allocation of resources, monitoring delays and obstructions and advising on necessary modifications; the Committee also had discretionary powers to make decisions or to refer them to the cabinet, and vetted communications from all other interested parties (IMP: 90). It should be noted that the NDPC consisted exclusively of civil servants, and depended very closely on the technical advice of the EPU. Although efforts were already being made to develop a cadre of qualified Malaysian planners, the EPU in turn drew advice from the World Bank, the Ford Foundation and other international organisations. The crisis of May 1969: the search for a National Ideology Caiden and Wildavsky remark that Malaysia moved from a draft development plan which was 'no more than a hurried compilation of sectoral projects' to a five-year plan specifying development goals; a second five-year plan which set explicit output and employment targets within a framework of national accounts, statistics and project finance; and a first Malaysia plan, containing a brief analysis of Malaysia's development and problems in recent years, more detailed projections, a fifteen-year perspective plan and detailed sectoral programmes. (Caiden & Wildavsky 1974: 214-15) The achievements of the Second Malayan Plan (1960-5) were disappointing, the high annual average rate of growth in government services (5.1%) contrasting with the slow rate of growth in agriculture (1.7%). By contrast the achievements of the First Malaysia Plan (1966-70) were spectacular: agricultural growth exceeded the 5% per annum target by a further 3 % , and exports increased dramatically. Over the 1960s GNP grew by an average of 6.1% each year, comfortably ahead of the UN First Development Decade Target of 5% (2MP: 10-16). The government pursued development {kemajuan) with bold increases in public investment, financed by taxation, an 'Economy Drive', and the tripling of foreign loans and grants. While investment in manufacturing and industrial development remained low the proportion of public development expenditure on agriculture and rural development increased from 15% to 24% 251

Malaysia - a case study for the First Malaysia Plan, estimated expenditure doubling to a little over M$l billion (IMP: 69). On 13 May 1969, in the penultimate year of the Plan, the mood of optimism was suddenly shattered. In Kuala Lumpur a mob apparently celebrating election gains by two mainly Chinese opposition parties ran into a counter-demonstration by UMNO supporters. Violence spread rapidly: shops and houses were looted and burned, and perhaps as many as a thousand people were killed or injured. The police temporarily lost control of the situation and troops, armoured cars and helicopters were needed to prevent mob violence from spreading' (Shaw 1976:1). A State of Emergency was declared, extended three days later to the whole country. Parliament was suspended, and Tun Razak was placed in charge of a National Operations Council, which ruled by decree for nearly two years. The time bomb of interethnic tensions had exploded. Although few civil servants can be persuaded to discuss the events of 13 May in any detail, the 'Incident', Tragedy' or Trauma' is referred to repeatedly as a major point of departure in Malaysian affairs. After the initial shock had been absorbed it became clear to Tun Razak and his colleagues that some close inspection of the basic fabric of Malaysian society was required: The trauma of the incident, therefore, led to a critical evaluation of past policies and approaches, out of which the Rukunegara - the National Ideology - was formulated as a basis for national unity' (4MP: 2). A new Department of National Unity was set up to devise the National Ideology (see Figure 5.3); it was placed in charge of a senior Malay civil servant, Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie, hitherto the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and recently coopted as a member of the National Operations Council (NOC). He had acquired the 'deserved reputation of being the Government's "think tank" ' (Milne & Mauzy 1977: 92), and the main source of the Rukunegara was a speech he had made shortly after the riots. In his words the National Ideology should be 'the nexus uniting the people of Malaysia'; it should apply comprehensively to government policy and to the actions of all groups and individuals, thus ensuring that 'the nation shall rapidly move towards purposeful change'. Ghazali insisted that 'the new Ideology must be big enough so as to uplift each community from its petty parochialism and limited vision and to enlist the passion, energy and talents of all men and women who will once again dare to hope and dare to act with discipline and purpose in the pursuit of their new hopes and expectations' (Milne 1970: 566). The link between ideology and national planning (see pp. 97-106) is thus more explicit in Malaysia than in many other countries. Profoundly liberal in posture, the Rukunegara seeks 'a progressive society oriented to modern science and technology' and pleads for justice, equity, unity 252

The search for a National Ideology Fig. 5.3. Rukunegara

PROCLAMATION IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Praise

be to Allah, the Lord of the Universe and may the blessings and peace of Allah be upon his messengers.

AND WHEREAS Malaysia is a free independent and sovereign Nation among the nations of the world; AND WHEREAS Malaysia is a multiracial society with diverse social and cultural traditions and values; AND WHEREAS the people of Malaysia endeavour to achieve greater unity, to promote the public welfare and to ensure social justice;

Now IN THE NAME OF ALLAH the Compassionate, the Merciful I,

TUANKU ISMAIL NASIRUDDIN SHAH IBNI AL-MARHUM SULTAN ZAINAL ABIDIN, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia do hereby proclaim and declare that our Nation shall be guided by the principles to be known as RUKUNEGARA specified in the Schedule hereto. SCHEDULE

RUKUNEGARA MALAYSIA, being dedicated— to achieving a greater unity of all her peoples; to maintaining a democratic way of life; to creating a just society in which the wealth of the nation shall be equitably shared; to ensuring a liberal approach to her rich and diverse cultural traditions; to building a progressive society which shall be oriented to modern science and technology;

OUR NATION,

WE, her peoples, pledge our united efforts to attain these ends guided by these principles— Belief in God (Keperchayaan kapada Tuhan) Loyalty to King and Country (Kesetiaan kapada Raja dan Negara) Upholding the Constitution (Keluhoran Perlembagaan) Rule of Law (Kedaulatan Undang2) Good Behaviour and Morality (Kesopanan dan Kesusilaan). KUALA LUMPUR,

31st day of August, 1970.

[PN. (P.U2.) 27.] 253

TUANKU ISMAIL NASIRUDDIN SHAH, Yang di-Pertuan Agong

Malaysia - a case study and democracy. As Milne remarks, although the format was quite new, the rhetoric was familiar, plainly evoking the 'Bargain' Constitution of 1957. The National Operations Council identified some Constitutional ingredients which were 'more basic than others' representing 'binding arrangements between the various races in this country . . . If these entrenched positions are in any way eroded, or weakened, the entire constitutional structure is endangered, and with it, the existence of the nation itself (Milne 1970: 569). Accordingly, the ideological carrot of the Rukunegara was backed up by a swingeing set of amendments to the Sedition Act in August 1970, which excluded from public discussion the powers and privileges of the 'King' and the state rulers, the laws on citizenship, the use of Islam as the state religion, Malay as the sole national and official language, and the special rights and privileges of the 'Bumiputra' peoples. There were various diagnoses of the trauma of May 1969; some traced the trouble back to economic and political unrest two years previously, to financial crises, and to labour unrest and riots in predominantly Chinese Penang. The official interpretation, much embroidered in subsequent years, saw it as a reaction to ethnic inequalities: Socio-political stability could not be maintained for long in situations where, for example, a Malay farmer coming to town, even with an increased income, felt somewhat alienated, somewhat an outsider, simply because he saw so few Malays in the shops, restaurants and factories of the town. And so might the Chinese and Indians when going to a Malay dominated agricultural area. (3MP: 6)

The elimination of these inequalities was seen as the key to racial harmony, national unity, prosperity, consensus, and thus the elimination of that other persistent threat, communist insurgency. To many Chinese, this was simply the assertion of Malay domination. When in September 1970 Tunku Abdul Rahman resigned as Prime Minister in favour of his efficient Deputy, Tun Razak, many feared a Malay dictatorship. However, Malay interests were far from united, and Tun Razak's own party, UMNO, was riven with factions. His approach was conciliatory; for three years he worked to expand the inter-party Alliance into a National Front (Barisan Nasional), mopping up opposition and providing the basis for a new coalition government in 1974. He argued: 'The socio-economic revolution will fail and come to nought, if our socio-political situation is not stable . . . the National Front concept is a positive effort towards reducing political tension so as to allow the Government to concentrate on intensifying development' (Milne & Mauzy 1977: 190). The Third Malaysia Plan's declaration that the 'entire socio-economic system of the nation has been restructured' (3MP: 1) is of course a gross overstatement. Nevertheless, Tun Razak's use of the word 'revolution' is of more than passing interest (see p. 211). If the events of 1969 did indeed 254

The New Economic Policy constitute a revolution, it was one which consolidated the power of the state rather than that of a particular class or ethnic group. The second 'Emergency' concentrated power in the hands of a small National Operations Council, a kind of cabinet/civil service junta, and it is significant that this relationship has been perpetuated in the present National Action Council and in the cluster of other central institutions (see Figure 5.4). In one anodyne official view, the riots were a manifestation of popular energy which the state must harness: they revealed 'a socially and politically volatile society, yet a society responsive to new concepts and policies of social and economic order' (2MP: 2). Civil society was now clearly dependent on the state not simply to secure its welfare and progress but to save it from those malignant forces which threatened to destroy it from within. The state officials could frame their transactions with major interest groups in terms of the threat of communal conflict or the threat of communist insurgency, or with both. These threats were also evident in the state's appeals for popular compliance, in the interests of development: The recurrence of militant communism and subversion by anti-national elements poses a major challenge to our democratic way of life and the timely achievement of national goals. Given that the Plan manifests the commitment of Government to ensure national security, the active participation of the people in the Plan for nation building provides the essential assurance that these threats will be overcome. Our principal strength lies in the fact that this war against the enemies of the nation is a people's war. (3MP: vi).

Restructuring the nation: the New Economic Policy

The official panacea for Malaysian ills devised by the government was the New Economic Policy (NEP) - a very curious echo of the Bolshevik postrevolutionary strategy. The NEP had its first official manifestation in the Second Malaysian Plan (1971-5) but appeared ex post in its fullest and most self-conscious form as a twenty-year Perspective in the Mid-Term Review of that Plan published in 1973. There are different opinions about who propounded the NEP, ranging from particular individuals like Tun Razak himself, to a small clique of Malay bureaucrats. Milne and Mauzy conclude that: The New Economic Policy was not produced by any single person or group of persons in the Government. Among politicians it bore the decisive imprint of Tun Razak and reflected the thought of Tan Sri Ghazali Shafie. The civil servants and others who hammered it out were not all situated in the government offices which might obviously have been expected to produce new and significant economic policies, but were sometimes drawn into the operation on the basis of personal ties and interest in the subject. (Milne & Mauzy 1977: 326) 255

Malaysia - a case study There is no doubt that Ghazali's new National Unity Board served as a ginger group, having already laid down the basic political premises in the Rukunegara. Omar (1980) assigns a central role to Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Shamsuddin, who had been secretary of the committee which worked out the 'Bargain' Constitution of 1957 in London; at the time when the NEP was being formulated he was Chief Secretary to the Government, and thus Malaysia's most senior civil servant. Omar describes him as a powerful and influential figure not merely by virtue of his formal position and the various important hats he wears. Most probably his power derived mainly through his personal influence with the political leaders, especially the Prime Minister [Tun Razak] who has absolute confidence in him. The Chief Secretary was the Prime Minister's assistant when the latter was State Secretary of Pahang and both have been closely associated ever since. During the NOC (emergency) days of 1969/71, when the Prime Minister, then Deputy Prime Minister took over the reigns of government as the Director of Operations, the Chief Secretary was made Chief of Civil Affairs, the second and most powerful post. . . (Omar 1980: 67-8)

The potency of the Chief Secretary's role should be emphasised: he was not only influential by personality and personal affiliation; he had also acquired in the expansion of the bureaucracy a formal presence on virtually all the most important central decision-making bodies (see Figure 5.4). The Chief Secretary's influence in cabinet business is pervasive: he 4s responsible for summoning meetings of the Cabinet, arranging the agenda, distributing papers for discussion, keeping minutes and passing on the decision of the Cabinet to government bodies required to implement them' (Milne & Mauzy 1977: 250). Cabinet business is, of course, highly privileged and 'information about the workings of the Cabinet is therefore slight, and still less is known about the committees which are set up by the Cabinet' (op. cit.: 250-1). It was Abdul Kadir who convened the 'task group' of officials to hammer out the details of the NEP (Omar 1980: 41). As a member of the National Action Council, the Economic Council and the Security Council, as head of the civil service, secretary to the cabinet and convenor of the National Development Planning Committee, Abdul Kadir was uniquely placed to see the new policy through to the status of law. It is characteristic that he is rarely named, even in Omar's otherwise informative study of policy-making (1980). He eschewed publicity, and thus the full extent of his contribution remains obscure. His anonymity is an expression of his enclosure within the civil service; by contrast the author of the Rukunegara, Ghazali Shafie, became a public figure, entered politics by way of appointment to the Senate, and has served as a minister in successive governments. However, lacking a constituency, he has had insufficient party support to make him a serious contender for the Prime Ministership. 256

The New Economic Policy In tune with the international criticisms of the techniques of planning (see p. 48), the May 1969 crisis promoted a marked shift to politics in the design of Malaysian development. Harried a good deal by the National Unity Board, the Economic Planning Unit went into a period of eclipse. Although, as Snodgrass remarks, the expatriate head of the EPU, C.L. Robless, was 'deeply involved' in the formulation of the NEP, it was clear that he was concerned essentially with its technical ingredients (1980: 279). (His successor was a young Chinese economist, Thong Yaw Hong, who has since acquired the titles of Tan Sri and Datuk, and is now head of the Treasury.) Omar declares that the EPU was incapable of making the decisions about redistribution which were required: 'they were economists trained by foreign advisers to examine policies purely in the economic context. To dabble in socio-political issues involving socioeconomic imbalance between the Malays and the Chinese would be taboo. In fact such issues were never discussed openly' (1980: 43). In 1971 Tun Razak, now Prime Minister, introduced the Second Malaysian Plan as a 'blueprint for the New Economic Policy. It incorporates the two-pronged objective of eradicating poverty, irrespective of race, and restructuring Malaysian society to reduce and eventually eliminate the identification of race with economic function' (2MP: v). Tun Razak insisted that 'The Government is determined that the Plan must succeed and, in the final analysis, it can only succeed with the acquiescence and enthusiastic support of the people' (2MP: vi). The Second Malaysia Plan translated the underprivileged position of the Malays into a problem of 'imbalance' among five distinct socio-economic sectors, ranked in terms of development priorities: Modern urban sector - high income - Malays:non-Malays = 2:5 Modern rural sector - medium income- Malays:non-Malays = 2:5 Government sector - medium income- Malays:non-Malays = 5:3 Traditional urban sector- low income - Malays:non-Malays = 2:3 Traditional rural sector - low income - Malays:non-Malays = 3:1 (2MP: 37-8) The NEP sought to redress these imbalances, essentially by displacing the 'traditional rural sector' and expanding the 'modern urban sector'. In the words of a senior government economist, the fundamental task of national planning, transcending even the goal of national unity, is 'to gear the economy to the process of industrialisation'. In 'modernising the rural sector' FLDA thus has a mediating role, helping to fulfil the NEP goal of 'freeing' the Malays from subsistence agriculture (3MP: 7). It is significant that after this initial appearance the 'Government Sector' disappears from the formula, indeed public information about the composition and wealth of this category becomes increasingly inaccessible, civil servants 257

Malaysia - a case study being divided among 'professional and technical' and 'administrative and managerial' personnel in official reckoning (v. e.g. 3MP: 76ff.). One important intention of the NEP was that by 1990 'Malays and other indigenous peoples will manage and own at least 30% of the total commercial and industrial activities in all categories and scales of operation' (2MP: 41-2). This was to be achieved partly be displacement of foreign investment, but the main instrument of progress was to be economic growth: 'no group in the country need, therefore, experience any loss or feel any sense of deprivation' (3MP: 89). Relatively wealthy groups would not notice their reduced share of the expanding economic cake: 'The strategy is founded on the philosophy of active participation, not on disruptive redistribution. It works in an ever expanding economy in which the growing volume of goods and services is enjoyed by all groups in the Malaysian society in such a manner that there is no feeling of deprivation by any group, and also in a manner which contributes to national unity' (2MP: 47). At this time the liberal world was espousing development doctrines of 'redistribution with growth' (see p. 59), and in a study commissioned by the World Bank, Meerman notes that 'a major reason for the popularity of the Malaysia NEP abroad is its emphasis on what is widely seen as simply good redistribution' (1979: 37). Malaysia appeared to be well on the way towards achieving that much desired combination of efficiency and equity. It was both solvent and credit-worthy, and evidently had enough administrative capacity to see the rhetoric of planning through into practical effect. However, Meerman also remarks that redistribution of the kind intended by the NEP did not necessarily imply equity, as it said nothing about 'the concentration of wealth in relatively few hands' (ibid.). In a critical study, Shamsul Amri (1979a) sees the 'theoretical orientations' of the NEP as a functionalist view of modernisation, well illustrated in the dualist interpretation of socio-economic sectors: the NEP remedy for the 'under-development' of the 'traditional Malay sector' is the inculcation of 'the rules and conduct of capitalism', including the work ethic, a 'need for achievement' and a zeal for upward social mobility (op. cit.: 6). In his introduction to the Third Malaysia Plan, Datuk Hussein Onn, Tun Razak's successor as Prime Minister, declared that 'there can be no substitute for hard work and determination to succeed9

(3MP: vii). True to the evolutionary-functionalist dogma, the official view is that 'the political and economic frameworks by themselves are not sufficient to build an integrated society. They need to be reinforced by the development of individuals' values' (4MP: 148). In populist vein the state has sought a new kind of contract with 'the people', one which binds them as individuals to the nation without the disruptive mediation of communal identities: 'What is sought is a society that 258

The New Economic Policy is both oriented towards performance and achievement, a society that is both motivated and committed to the goals of the nation and not preoccupied with communal interests' (3MP: 104). However, it is plain that this supra-communal identity must in some sense be the sum of its schismatic parts, and on this official policy has been vague; in 1971 a National Congress on Culture 'resolved that the basis of a national culture was the indigenous [Bumiputra] culture as well as elements of other cultures which could be woven into the national culture' (4MP: 383). The Third Malaysia Plan reiterated this: 'The evolution of a Malaysian national identity will be based on an integration of all the virtues from the various cultures in Malaysia, with the Malay culture forming its core' (3MP: 94). The construction of this new compound identity remains deeply mysterious: how are the Malays, fastidious about their adat, to be persuaded to assimilate the 'virtues' of Chinese and Indian culture? Who decides what is virtuous and what is not? Later official statements seem to recognise these problems, and appeal for an identity which transcends ethnic criteria and emphasises more universalistic values: Malaysians with differing backgrounds need to further identify themselves with the nation and cultivate a sense of pride and belonging to the nation. They need to regard their diversity as a source of strength and take advantage of the wisdom and richness of their heritage. They should emphasise more on their commonness in experiences and in values, such as tolerance, goodwill, accommodation, mutual respect, devotion to duty, loyalty to family and spirit of humility reinforced by the teachings of Islam and other religions. (4MP: 152)

The National Unity Board has been charged with the fabrication of this new national identity. It has concentrated on organising research and establishing interethnic community relations councils in the towns. It has sought very assiduously to explain each culture to the others, producing booklets on polite forms of address in Malay, Chinese and Tamil and explaining the intricacies of different marriage customs. As in other countries, there has been much investment in promoting arts and crafts as a focus for national sentiments. In these ways the government has sought to encourage 'the development of a national culture by promoting greater awareness of the richness and vibrant cultural heritage of each ethnic group and the part it played in the evolution of a national culture' (4MP: 150). Of greater significance is the government's insistence that Malay must become the official national language - Bahasa Malaysia. (Important documents like the National Plans and the Treasury Reports will no doubt continue to be published in English for international consumption.) The Second Malaysia Plan declared that Malay would be the medium of instruction in all primary schools by 1975, in all secondary 259

Malaysia - a case study schools by 1982, and in all courses for admission to university by 1983 (2MP: 236). In Malaysia enthusiasm for education and pressure on facilities are acute - 60% of all schools are in double session each day (Meerman 1979: 101). The government places a high value on the importance of education: during the 1970s the 'curriculum in schools was developed not only to impart skill and knowledge but also to instil and inculcate values and norms in line with the principles of RukunegarcC (4MP: 343). It was designed to induce 'a greater sense of national belonging, love for the nation, greater self-discipline and respect for elders, appreciation of what the nation bequeaths to the people and the responsibilities expected of them in return' (3MP: 94). Malaysian policies have been described as authoritarian, and this can certainly be seen in attitudes to the young. Parents have a particular responsibility for 'strengthening of society's moral and spiritual fibre' (3MP: 105): they 'have a profound duty to exercise more responsible leadership and guide the young to meet the challenges and problems ahead and to adopt values consistent with Rukunegara and the realities of a plural society' (4MP: 152). The government has for long understood the value of the mass media (see pp. 175-81) in seeking to bond a progressive people to a progressive state: during the 1970s, 'The mass media, particularly radio and television, played an important role in creating an environment for greater understanding, social integration, cultural development and the development of a disciplined society' (4MP: 150). By 1980 90% of the population was covered by radio and 85% by television networks (ibid.). FLDA has a weekly half-hour programme called 'Fajar du bumipermata\ 'Dawn in the land of the jewel'. Rated the most popular radio show in 1975, its image of prosperity and integration has done much to enhance the reputation of FLDA, although it seems to have had little influence on recruitment and is regarded with scepticism by the settlers themselves (see MacAndrewsl977:59). FLDA and the expansion of public enterprise

The Second Malaysia Plan promised that 'besides providing the leadership in the articulation and achievement of the basic objectives of the New Economic Policy, the Government will assume an expanded and more positive role in the economy than in the past . . . it will participate more directly in the establishment and operation of a wide range of productive enterprises' (2MP: 7). Malaysia now has 'one of the largest public sectors of all developing countries. In ratio of public expenditure to gross national product (GNP), 39% in 1972, it ranks among the welfare states of Western Europe and North America' (Meerman 1979: 18), and has prompted some commentators to draw parallels with state socialism. By 260

FLDA and public enterprise 1981 there were 657 federally controlled corporations, many of them with pronouncable acronyms - PERN AS, PETRONAS (oil), MAJUIKAN (fish), MAJUTERNAK (livestock), FIMA (food), FID A (industries) strongly evocative of the nationalised enterprises in Indonesia (see Snodgrass 1980: 233n). Critics claim that the growth of state enterprises in what is supposedly a free-enterprise economy has inhibited privatesector investment as well as deflecting government resources from more essential services (Peacock 1980). The official view is that public enterprise acts as 'a stimulus' to private commerce and industry (3MP: 280), and that by tax incentives, protective tariffs and inducements to foreign investment, the government has already done much to encourage the private sector. The Fourth Plan stresses the importance of private investment, reckoning that it will account for 72.2% of the national total between 1981 and 1985. Nevertheless, the government is concerned that private business interests should comply with the terms of the NEP, and has expressed concern that increased public spending may initially accentuate the racial imbalance, for example by favouring the existing (mainly Chinese) construction industry (3MP: 8-9). A Foreign Investment Committee (FIC) and the Industrial Coordination Act of 1975 have sought to regulate investment in areas favourable to the Malays (for example, 'agribusiness'), and to ensure Malay access to share capital. When Plans are being drafted a Private Sector Consultative Committee is convened, but its role is insignificant. Business interests are brought to bear much more effectively through informal networks, and are much more concerned with the annual budget than with long-range planning. A principal justification for the state enterprises is that they establish and consolidate capital resources 'in trust' for the Bumiputra peoples. The most prominent 'trust' Agency remains MARA (Majlis Amanah Ra'ayat) which was established as a successor to the Rural and Industrial Development Authority (RIDA) in 1966. MARA has set up transport, retailing and other businesses, and has provided loans on generous terms to Malay entrepreneurs. Both the political premises and the economic viability of MARA have often been questioned: Snodgrass remarks, 'I know of no objective statement of its cumulated achievements and failures over a period of years, although there are published Annual Reports for some individual years' (1980: 232n). In 1972 a MARA official estimated that the default rate on loans was a high as 30%. Senior civil servants regard MARA with scepticism, acknowledging that political and personal influence is too often used to obtain loans and scholarships, and that much of its resources are in fact managed by Chinese businessmen, working in a so-called 'Ali-Baba' relationship with sleeping Malay partners (Husin Ali 1975: 34). Until recently, little thought has been 261

Malaysia - a case study given to how the share capital of these 'trust' agencies and enterprises may be allocated rationally and equitably to private Malay interests. Responding to increasing criticism, the government established in 1981 a National Unit Trust Scheme (Amanah Saham Nasional) whose purpose is to issue government secured equity to Bumiputra on privileged terms, on condition that it would not be traded openly until 1990. By October 1981 800,000 people had bought M$276 millions worth of stock, and it is hoped that some M$18 billions worth will be sold by the end of the NEP period in 1990. FLDA acquired, almost incidentally, the status of a Bumiputra 'trust' agency during the 1970s. At the same time it discovered the problems of devolving the resources of a massive public enterprise into multiple private ownership. By the mid-1970s FLDA had become 'perhaps the largest single agency landholding in the world' (Shamsul Amri 1979b: 216), but it was not until the end of the decade that the first handful of settlers acquired private titles - by which time the government was having serious doubts about the wisdom of relinquishing control of public resources in this way. The total investment in FLDA has, by any standards, been enormous. Between 1971 and 1980 the Authority spend an estimated total of M$2,411 millions, which may be compared with the M$464 millions spent by MARA, the M$615 by the administration, the M$3,378 on defence, and the M$4,923 millions on social services (including health, education, etc.) (4MP: 118). Many justifications have been found for the investment in FLDA, the most significant being the way it has consistently exceeded land development targets, especially in its formative years. Between 1971 and 1980 FLDA developed 923,425 acres (2.2% over targets and six times as much as private enterprise). However, persistent use of the phrase 'land development' is deceptive: whereas FLDA has exceeded targets in terms of acreages, it has repeatedly failed to do so in terms of numbers of people settled. For example, in 1960 only 1,981 families out of a targeted 4,662 had been settled, and during the whole Second Malaysia Plan period FLDA 'implanted' only 69% of the scheduled 20,000 families (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 62). Such figures call to question FLDA's contribution to the relief of rural unemployment and urban migration, as well as the economic benefits of investment in 'land development' (see Hasan 1980: 45). In the Third Malaysia Plan, FLDA was allocated M$l ,100 millions to develop 350,000 acres and settle 20,500 families (3MP: 238); this indicates a proposed expenditure of M$53,658 per family, a sum without parallel in settlement schemes in other developing countries. A conservative estimate of the cost of a FLDA scheme in the early 1970s was M$10.5 millions (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 150). The resources with which the settlers are endowed by the state (through FLDA) are, on the face of it, 262

FLDA and public enterprise generous: each family is allotted twelve acres of rubber or fourteen acres of oilpalm, as well as a quarter acre houselot containing a small prefabricated house. (The earlier allocation of eight and ten acres respectively was increased in 1973 to keep pace with rising living standards (op. cit.: 28).) While settlers on rubber schemes acquire individual plots of land, the exigencies of oilpalm management have prompted FLDA to organise tenure on a shareholding basis: settlers acquire a share certificate entitling them to a notional ten or fourteen acres on a 100-200 acre 'block'. The integrity of holdings on all FLDA schemes is strictly preserved by proscription of sub division. Under the original formula settlers were allocated two acres of land for domestic use, but the general failure to cultivate this land obliged FLDA to combine it with the main crop share. Up to the mid-1970s, the major justification for public investment in the FLDA schemes was that they paid. No other rural development agency responded so promptly and so positively to the output goals by which economic growth was planned in the 1950s and 1960s. No matter how unenterprising FLDA settlers may have appeared as individuals, as a labour force they paid their way. In the 1970s a number of cost-benefit analyses were made and all concluded that 'the FELD A programme is an efficient use of public funds' (Snodgrass 1980: 200n). These included an evaluation by I.M.D. Little, an author of the social cost-benefit analysis technique described in Chapter 2 (v. Little & Tipping 1972). On these calculations the high export value of palm oil produced a particularly positive social rate of return - 20% according to Thillainathan (1979). From the outset, FLDA settlers were made to feel privileged, the chosen clients of a businesslike state. It should be noted that 90% of peasant landholdings outside FLDA are less than ten acres (Ooi 1963: 193), and that as the great majority of settlers have been chosen because they own less than two acres or none at all, FLDA settlement does indeed bring the promise of relative wealth. In a 1959 publicity brochure, 'No Need To Be Poor', FLDA insisted that land development was 'not slum clearance or the provision of poverty relief, but was intended 'to provide opportunity for those who had initiative, not charity for those who haven't' (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 8). About the same time Tun Razak informed an Australian audience: 'anyone who does not make the best use of his opportunity is kicked out, and his place given to someone more deserving' (Shaw 1976:135). Such an eventuality was certainly rare, and in a more benign view the settlers were pioneers, 'adequately trained in modern practices of farming and social and community leadership in order that they can contribute much to the nation' (FLDA Annual Report 1960). Above all, the settlers were expected to manifest that spirit of enterprise on which the progress of the nation depended: 263

Malaysia - a case study It is not agriculture that hampers upward social mobility in terms of progress in economic and social status but a lack of capability to turn it from a subsistence occupation to a business-oriented enterprise. The Government can only provide the facilities. The entrepreneurial spirit and will to be expressed through individual efforts or co-operatives must come from the farmers themselves. (3MP: 96-7)

FLDA has made many efforts to stimulate a spirit of enterprise among its charges, encouraging them to establish and operate transport, retail and other businesses on the schemes. In 1977, 420 lockup stalls were available for rent on eighty-four schemes but by 1980 only 282 of them were in operation (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 90; 4MP: 304). The response of the very small number of Chinese settlers to these opportunities has been in striking contrast to the Malay majority (MacAndrews 1977: 90-121). Where Malay enterprise has thrived, it has not always been to the benefit of FLDA: in the relatively affluent Bukit Besar scheme, thirty-four small shops were operating in 1974 and there were several thriving taxi and transport businesses (MacAndrews 1977: 180). However, the success of these activities has led to neglect of the main crop and by 1974 'landlordism' (relinquishing agricultural duties to hired labour - often Chinese recruited from the New Villages) had become a problem for management at Bukit Besar and elsewhere (op. cit.: 174). FLDA schemes are not sustained by a spirit of individual enterprise, but by rigorous management. In 1974 Bukit Besar scheme had a FLDA staff of twenty, about one for every twenty families on the scheme (MacAndrews 1977:172). Administrative costs are correspondingly high: in the same year the Federal government gave FLDA an administrative grant of M$40 millions, indicating that it cost M$l,341 in public funds to administer each settler family (Shamsul Amri 1979b: 216). It is therefore understandable that the Authority is constrained to make its operations viable. It has experimented with different forms of labour process, trying to find a palatable compromise between the estate model and a pattern of production more consistent with the generation of self-sustaining communities. Up to 1962 it was assumed that each 'phase' of settlers would work cooperatively while the rubber or oilpalm was still unproductive, receiving a flat-rate allowance (adjusted by family size) of between M$50 and M$65 a month. This led to neglect, and to a FLDA decision that 'the settler will now have to earn his daily allowance against a measured piece of work. The subsistence allowance cannot be claimed by him as a matter of right any more irrespective of the number of working days put in' (FLDA Circular no. 95, 1962). It was still insisted that settlers were not receiving 'wages' - allegedly to avoid worker compensation regulations (Ness 1967: 183). From 1962, men received M$2.90 and women M$2.40 each day for a set of specified tasks. This, it was said, 'eradicated the com264

FLDA and public enterprise placent and irresponsible attitude of settlers and gave them more selfreliance and self-respect' (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 77). A brief experiment in allocating specific oilpalm plots to settlers only confirmed that individual responsibility was no guarantee of good management. A solution was eventually found in the 'block system', a variant of share-cropping in which a group of about fifteen settlers work together, receive 'wages' according to the tasks they perform, and divide the remaining earnings of the block among themselves. One of their number acts as a mandor (a title borrowed from the rubber estates) and, in collaboration with one of the FLDA Field Assistants, supervises work and records labour inputs. All financial transactions are managed by the scheme office. There are plainly fundamental differences between the working relationships and patterns of cooperation preferred by FLDA management on the one hand, and those familiar to the settlers from their experience of village life on the other (see MacAndrews 1977: 30-2). Wilson stresses that in Malay communities 'employment' is seen as 'a social relationship first and foremost'; it has a 'moral aspect' in which working partners see themselves as of equal status (1967: 99). Supervision and 'wages' belong in the alien world of estate agriculture, and cannot be understood as compatible with 'cooperation' in its village meanings. Writers on Malay society have identified various forms of cooperation: kerah, corvee labour for the Sultan, is a thing of the past (Husin Ali 1975: 118); gotong royong is communal labour for the common good - road building, canal cleaning, etc. - and as such has had much populist appeal (see pp. 226-7). Derau (op. cit.: 54) or kerja bersamasama (Wilson 1967: 96-7) is group labour for individual benefit, usually on an exchange basis. Tolong menolong is mutual assistance between two individuals, again usually on a quid pro quo basis (Wilson 1967: 96-7; Husin Ali 1975: 51). Pawah, share-cropping arrangements on rice land, are perhaps the closest approximation to the 'block' system described above (Bray and Robertson 1980). However, none of these forms of collaboration, which depend on an established and morally complex fabric of community relationships, can be equated with the 'cooperativism' (see Chapter 3) favoured by the FLDA bureaucracy, and it would be unwise to assume that derau or gotong royong can be assimilated readily to official understanding of 'cooperation'. Cooperativism has had a chequered history in Malaysia, but the Fourth Malaysia Plan promises a revival, very much in the entrepreneurial spirit: The cooperative movement provides an important vehicle for the promotion of economic activities, mobilization of capital and the acquisition of property. The participation of target groups such as small farmers and fishermen into farmers' 265

Malaysia - a case study and fishermens' cooperatives will be intensified during the 4MP through the provision of infrastructure, working capital and management training . . . (4MP: 192) FLDA has hoped that cooperativism, combining notions of communality, efficiency, individual opportunity and bureaucratic control, may provide a mechanism for the eventual devolution of scheme management to the settlers themselves. Cooperatives flourished on the lucrative oilpalm schemes in the 1970s: one was established by the scheme council at Bukit Besar in 1974 with an initial capital of M$60,000 - largely supplied by retrieving 'slush oil' from factory effluent; a year later its capital, invested mainly in transport, amounted to M$193,000 (MacAndrews 1977: 181). However, there is no evidence that these cooperative ventures will provide a substitute for FLDA management. Very significantly, when the three earliest FLDA schemes became 'Independent' in 1977, they elected to remain under FLDA management (paying, of course, for the privilege) and other mature schemes have, without exception, followed suit. The visitor cannot fail to be impressed by the efficiency of work organisation on a FLDA oilpalm scheme. In the established estate tradition, the entire working population 'musters' at 5.00 to 5.30 a.m., while the mandors and Field Assistants allocate the day's tasks: harvesting on a monthly cycle, weeding, manuring, pruning, pollinating and maintaining access paths. Work ends in the early afternoon when all supervisors report in detail on the day's activities. The work is intensively supervised; for example, a worker who has weeded a row of palms reports the fact to his mandor by putting a slip of paper on a thorn. The mandor (who must be literate and is elected by his block colleagues) records this in a notebook, and also marks the harvested fruit bunches with the block code. He is checked by a FLDA Field Assistant, who is responsible to a Supervisor and ultimately to the scheme Manager. Over the years the Manager's role has become more complex, shifting from mainly technical concerns to the control of a population in the region of 2,000. With some reason, Managers on the Kulai complex likened their responsibilities to those of a District Officer. The Managers are in turn answerable to the Area Controller, who reports to the headquarters in Kuala Lumpur where the Director General invigilates progress in his Operations Room. Settlers are rewarded in terms of the market price of their share of the crop, and official assessments of their income are favourable: 'The average monthly income of settlers . . . ranged from $490-810 in 1979 compared with incomes of only about $80-120 from their previous occupations' (4MP: 37). According to Meerman the net earnings of FLDA settlers compare less favourably with those on other development schemes: he calculates the mean household income per capita as M$62 a 266

FLDA and public enterprise month in the mid-1970s, compared with M$101 elsewhere (1979: 262). One reason for the reduced income of FLDA settlers is that the high cost of land development is recouped from them, with 61/2% interest compounded annually. When the main crop is producing, about M$2,000 a year is deducted from earnings by FLDA for a minimum of fifteen years, whereupon the settler receives his title. Fluctuations in market prices, and thus in net earnings, have obliged FLDA to be lenient, and according to Shamsul Amri 'the slow rate of repayment is quite alarming': of a total of M$855 millions outstanding in 1974, only M$12.3 millions had been recovered, nearly half of which was interest payments (1979b: 219-20). Nevertheless, settlers reacted against the suggestion that the repayment rate should be increased during the 1971-5 palm oil boom, and were even more hostile to compulsory savings schemes intended to provide a cushion against price instability. Later in the 1970s, a more critical interpretation of the costs and benefits of FLDA was gaining ground. The radical shift in liberal social science (see p. 48) inspired the acerbic criticism that FLDA perpetuated the plantation system, the 'settlers' being in effect a dependent wage labour force, and the whole operation a symptom of active underdevelopment. One line of argument insisted that FLDA, like other public enterprises, 'not only yielded little or no benefit for the poverty groups, but also tended to intensify the existing inequality among the rural population' (Tan 1981: 221). According to Peacock, 'For the fortunate few who are selected, it must be similar to winning a lottery. The majority of the rural poor are not touched by the schemes'(1980: 385). Others pointed out that patterns of employment and labour migration had changed considerably since the inception of FLDA: 100,000 Malaysians were being absorbed by the Singapore factories, severe labour shortages had developed in major development areas like Pahang, Johore, Trengganu and Kelantan, and illegal immigrants were flooding in from Indonesia. In such complex circumstances opening up new tracts of forest land made less sense than redeveloping fragmented and uneconomic smallholdings in settled areas (4MP: 82). FLDA has been accused of fostering an unequal distribution of wealth among the rural Malay population but of impoverishing the settlers themselves. Whereas those on the more lucrative oilpalm schemes have fared relatively well, many of the older rubber schemes are notoriously run-down: for them, Shamsul Amri has calculated that 'if an annual rate of inflation of 5% is assumed, the real per capita monthly income can be as low as $10.92 which is $24.08 below what is required if the poverty line is maintained at a "constant" $35.00. If the rate of inflation is 10% the monthly income can fall as low as $7.07 per month' (1979b: 224). 267

Malaysia - a case study A more damaging prognosis is that all FLD A settlers will decline into poverty, and that the entire project has been designed to maximise shortterm gains. This problem derives from the fact that each FLD A scheme is dependent on a tree crop with a productive life of about thirty-five years, and that settlers are selected as a very uniform cohort of young, able-bodied family men. There is, in the words of one economist, an 'inherent conflict between the demographic growth path of the household and that of the yield profile of the production function' (Chan 1982:4). In other words, the crop and the community will age simultaneously: 'What is crucial is that the period of low yield, and thus low total return, coincides with the latter stage of the life cycle of the family' (op. cit.: 4). FLDA has failed to resolve the dilemmas of production and reproduction which we have discussed in Chapter 4 (see pp. 199ff.). Land hunger and the celebrity of FLDA have generated a superabundance of recruits, enabling the Authority to apply exacting selection procedures, applicants being graded on a 'points' system according to criteria of 'need' and 'suitability'. Plainly, something resembling a 'natural' community would, in the short run, diminish the cost-effectiveness of a project which is already considered expensive. However, with the passage of time there is the unhappy prospect that the simultaneous ageing of the virile recruits will produce dozens of geriatric settlements throughout the country by the end of this century. In 1974 the Bukit Besar settlers were clustered quite tightly around an average age of 42.3 years (MacAndrews 1977: 175), and are now presumably mostly in their early 50s. An immediate problem has been the rapidly increasing proportion of children to adults - the dependency ratio; this was 3:1 at Bukit Besar in 1974. This has disturbed calculations of the viability both of individual households and of the scheme as a whole: real income is eroded and the capacity to repay the capital loan diminished (Chan 1982: 4). School facilities have been stretched to breaking point; all were in double session, and there were seven first forms in Bukit Besar in 1971, ten a year later. FLDA management is greatly exercised by the threat of delinquency, and devotes much energy to organising youth clubs, homework centres and other healthy distractions. By 1990, the hand-picked, fertile population will have added some 126,000 to the labour force, an increase which FLDA itself could not accommodate (MacAndrews & Yamamoto 1977). Settlers are concerned that their children should not in their turn become settlers, thinking of FLDA as a generational stepping-stone to urban employment. Their future survival may indeed depend on such a movement: 'unless there is outmigration and an inflow of remittances to subsidize the household income of the stayers the poverty cycle will repeat itself within two generations' (Chan 1982: 4). The heavily skewed age structure is accepted by settlers as one of the 268

Reorganising society idiosyncrasies of 'Rancangan' (scheme) life, and some even count the absence of greybeards as blessing. More concerned by looming problems of senescence, FLDA has tried to liberalise the recruitment process, placing greater emphasis on education, skills and 'health' rather than age, but without notable success. The threat of sharply reduced productivity and the encroachment of world recession has prompted FLDA to consider some radical changes to improve the cost effectiveness of the schemes. The pressure to sustain output targets has carried FLDA far from the original policies of smallholder development, and the Authority is now seeking government approval for a reorganisation which it describes, with more accuracy than tact, as the 'Estate System'. It is proposed that settlers will be paid on a piecework basis, becoming 'both wage labour and shareholders of the production enterprise' (Chan 1982: 5). Contracts will be of a standard employer/employee type, the aim being to establish 'a professionally managed production system with workers sharing substantially the returns from investment' (ibid.). Pension arrangements will ensure 'high and stable short term incomes and lifetime security of real income' (op. cit.: 7), and 'labour mobility is to be encouraged so that at the project level there is no concentrated bunching of age cohorts' (op. cit.: 8). The most drastic change is that settlers will acquire no rights in land. There is no doubt that this will be regarded as a fundamental betrayal by those who feel they have endured the rigours of the FLDA regime for the promise of land titles. It is unlikely that settlers will regard their new status as 'shareholders' in the FLDA corporation as adequate compensation. The earlier notion that the (Malay) people must be given a greater proprietory interest in the resources of their country has been subtly replaced by an insistence that the resources of the state must not be squandered on smallholders (see Straits Times, 9.12.81). The Third Malaysia Plan: reorganising society

The view of FLDA as an agent of underdevelopment is a recent one. At the time when the Third Malaysia Plan (1976-80) was being prepared, it was still possible to regard the state agencies and corporations as instruments of social reconstruction. Faith in planning as a technical and essentially economic exercise had been shaken, and the view that planning was politics had become well established in the study and practice of development. This shift is clearly expressed in the attention given to 'social and political perspectives' in the 3MP which, in scale and complexity, outdid its predecessors. The preparation of this plan serves to illustrate the structures and processes described in Chapter 2. In his introduction the Prime Minister, 269

Malaysia - a case study Datuk Hussein Onn, declared that 'The Plan is an action oriented agenda of policies, programmes and projects to spearhead further progress towards the building of a united, secure, socially just and resilient nation as envisioned in the Rukunegara within the time frame of the present generation' (3MP: v). The words 'secure' and 'socially just' intimate minor but significant changes in policy, consonant with the ideas and events of the 1970s. The Prime Minister offered the assurance that 'my Cabinet colleagues and I have personally directed the preparation of the Plan up to its final stages' (ibid.). He reported that the infrastructure required by the NEp was now 'in place'; investment would be over 50% greater than over the previous plan period; in addition to its unexploited reserves of land the discovery of oil gave Malaysia prospects for growth which could be the envy of all developing countries. The 3MP includes a revised Outline Perspective Plan (1971-90) which notes the persisting poverty of the rural Malays and their very slow progress towards acquiring 30% of share capital by 1990 (3MP: 35). The NEP goal of 'restructuring society' is reformulated to mean proportional representation of Malays in all sectors of the economy: these are listed, and range from agriculture, food, wood and paper products, to mining, construction, trade and services. To achieve this the Plan promises more control of the labour market, a more selective approach to education, the 'acquirement' of share capital for the Malays, and pressure on private enterprise and control over public enterprise to ensure the fulfilment of NEP goals. On 'social justice' the Plan promises a clamp-down on 'exploitation of the poor by the rich' and 'indulgence in corrupt and unfair practices' (3MP: 105). A model of the 'integrated macro-plan', rich in the language of functionalism, it offers a vision of 'Peace, prosperity and racial harmony' (3MP: 103). To secure the 'optimization of benefits' and effective 'inter-relationship and interdependence of all programmes and projects' (ibid.) a reorganised Socio-Economic Research and General Planning Unit (SERGPU) was given a prominent role in the preparation of the Plan. Its main purpose was to act as a counterbalance to the Economic Planning Unit, arguing for social and political, as against 'purely economic' interests. One of its three departments was a Public Complaints Bureau which performed some of the functions of an ombudsman but which was thought of mainly as a direct line of communication to 'the people'. In a familiar pattern, the importance of SERGPU was signalled by its elevation to ministerial status after the 1974 elections; out in the cold it lost much of its influence, and two years later was returned as a 'General Planning Unit' (taken by some to mean a 'department of residual affairs' (Omar 1980: 29)) to the fold of the Prime Minister's Department. In its heyday, SERGPU was responsible for an extremely interesting 270

Reorganising society chapter of the Third Plan on 'The Sociological, Political and Strategic Dimensions of Development' (3MP: 9Iff.). This is more of an essay than a set of proposals, and according to its main author, Dr Mohamed Noor Ghani, it was included in the face of considerable hostility from the EPU. An equivalent chapter is conspicuously absent from the Fourth Plan. In many respects Dr Noor Ghani epitomises the new generation of Malaysian planner/administrators: American-trained, extrovert and very much the 'Organisation man'. His PhD dissertation at the University of Pittsburg was on 'Programmes to eradicate poverty in Malaysia, Mexico and the USA' and it is clear that in his work he remains inspired by his training in functional social science. A Plan subsection on 'prerequisites for systems change', which he prepared, notes that 'norms, values and institutions' in society change slowly, in contrast to the 'political aspects of development which often triggers a faster rate of change, sometimes at a pace beyond a healthy rate of social evolution and reform' (3MP: 99). Interviewed in 1977, he saw the stimulation of entrepreneurship and social mobility as the main objects of planned development, and education as the principal means. In connection with the computerisation of the National Operations Room he was much concerned with devising 'indicators' for measuring poverty and social development. Insisting that plans and their evaluation should relate precisely to policy, he suggested that even the Rukunegara might be reduced to a set of statistical indices. In 1981 Dr Noor Ghani had been put in charge of the Manpower Planning Unit (MAMPU) where, in accordance with the Prime Minister's desire to ginger up the civil service, he had gained some notoriety by introducing clocking-in systems in central government departments. Figure 5.4 describes the main government organisations involved in the preparation of the Third Malaysia Plan. Plan formulation had become, by this time, a diffuse and complex process; it would therefore be a mistake to assume that the agencies listed in this figure have had protracted and routinised relationships with each other. While planning is actually in progress, new agencies are devised, functions are modified and relationships change. Formal status and de facto power do not always coincide: the most prominent example of this is the National Action Council which is very seldom convened, mainly because it virtually duplicates the cabinet; however, its Executive Committee and subsidiary Implementation Coordination Unit, both civil servant bodies, meet regularly and are highly influential (Omar 1980: 24). Again, the National Unity Board has not since had as much influence as it enjoyed during the formulation of the NEP. It must also be recognised that the proliferation of agencies and reduplication of functions provide a variety of alternative routes by which influence can be brought to bear on planning. The scope for this is greatly increased by the fact that a key official may occupy 271

Fig. 5.4. Formal structure of planning organisations in Malaysia, c. 1973-4 PRIME MINISTER

•

±

Psychological Warfare Research Public Services

SocioEconomic

\

Centre

Oept.ot National

M

UTIOMAL

National Economic Council

©

ECONOMIC QD P L A N N I N G (§) UNIT >B<

a

H

I

S

T ft

I

feofr

National

NAC

Develt.

Exec.

Planning

Cttee.

#

d

Education 1

--,

6 i6

National Planning Private

(others) I Agriculture I

Corns

6 © FEDERAL LAND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY

inruncn IAIIUR

Sector

COOROINATIOM 1 2 ) tOEY. ADMIN.

PI,. Public Sector

Special Projects

Population A Manpower

States i Regions

IHTER AGENCY PLG.

GROUPS

[after 1975 Regional (Hg. Offices]

STATE

D I S T R I C T

LEVEL

L E V E L

STATE PLANNIHG BRITS

STATE OPERATIONS ROOM

STATE DEVELOPMENT

STATE ACTION

COMMITTEES

COMMITTEES

DISTRICT

DISTRICT DEV. PLG COMMITTEES

OPERATIONS BOON

V I L L A G E

272

L E V E L

Secretary

E S

S e c u r i t y * - . Finance Council '(lyTneasur-y)

Committee Operations

/

of t h e C h i e f

Unit

I

Planning Un
Cabinet Division

Involvement Planning

P R I M E M I N I S TrERS ERS DEPARTMENT

Village

DP.Cs

STATE GOVERNMENTS

DISTRICT OFFICERS Parish Heads

Village

Heads

I.K.K.K.

Reorganising society several offices: for example Permanent Secretaries in the Treasury or Agriculture Ministry participate in a wide range of committees. At the highest level this gives a kind of coherence to administrative politics which is not evident in a diagram of official structures: the pervasive presence of the Chief Secretary to the Government is indicated in Figure 5.4. Transaction of official business depends heavily on these 'bridges', as well as on the ramifying networks of informal relationship. In such ways institutional opposition between agencies is mediated and decisions are reached. An example of such opposition is that between the EPU which is bent on spending money, and the Treasury which is bent on saving it: 'Thus the popular (and quite credible) story that agencies normally spend ten minutes to get a million dollars from the EPU in regard to the development budget but they have to spend a whole day to obtain a thousand dollars from the Treasury in regard to the operation budget' (Omar 1980: 39). A normative statement would therefore provide a very inadequate description of how the Malaysia Plans have been drawn up. Over time, certain durable nexuses of power have emerged, and a simplified picture of their active inter-relationships (Figure 5.4) may provide a clearer understanding of the planning process. In the Prime Minister's DepartSynopsis of the process of formulating the Third Malaysia Plan (See Figure 5.4) (1) Advised by the National Ideology, the new Economic Policy, monitoring of the Second Malaysia Plan, economic forecasts, general policy emanating from the multiparty Alliance, etc., and (2) financial ceilings specified by the Treasury, and the national Bank, (3) the Economic Planning Unit sends out a general circular to (4) Ministries, agencies and departments. These make proposals for inclusion in the plan which, along with proposals from state and district planning units, are sent to the Economic Planning Unit (5) for coordination, evaluation, etc. The EPU drafts an outline Plan, which it sends to (6) the National Development Planning Committee, where (7) departmental and agency representatives, including bank and Treasury officials meet in Inter-Agency Planning Groups to assemble the Draft Plan. As NDPC secretariat, (8) the Economic Planning Unit finalises the Draft which is submitted via (9) the National Economic Council to (10) the cabinet, and thence to Parliament, for approval. On publication, the Plan becomes instructions for (11) Ministries, agencies and departments. Implementation is monitored and coordinated by (12) the Implementation, Coordination and Development Administration Unit. (13) The entire process is invigilated by the Prime Minister's Department, notably by the Socio-Economic Research and General Planning Unit, in the case of the Third Malaysia Plan. Figure 5.4 also indicates the participation of the Chief Secretary to the Government, Tan Sri Abdul Kadir Shamsuddin 273

Malaysia - a case study ment the EPU is now 'more or less institutionalized' (Omar 1980: 46) and, after the period in which the NEP was propounded, has restored its reputation as the technical hub of the planning process. In 1981, senior civil servants agreed that the EPU was still the single most important influence on development policy, although the Central Committee of UMNO is reckoned to be increasingly important. The EPU's influence depends largely on the fact that it controls the most important lines of communication involved in compiling the Plan and in monitoring its consequences: thus it provides the 'Secretariat' (something more than the title suggests) for the National Development Planning Committee. Most of the NDPC's deliberations are carried out by Inter-Agency Planning Groups, eleven of which were convened to deal with the subject matter of the various chapters of the 3MP. The first and most important group, dealing with 'Macro policy and Development', consisted of EPU staff and representatives from the Treasury, the National Bank, the Statistics Department and the Labour Ministry; their work is represented in Chapters 1,2,3,6, and 8 of the Plan. The second group dealt with Agriculture and Land Development (Chapter 16) and other groups with the various 'sectoral programmes'. The remaining groups dealt with machinery for implementation and financing and with issues of 'poverty and racial balance' (Chapter 10). One effect of the IAPGs was to make the 3MP rather too long and repetitive. Officially, the EPU initiates the planning process by distributing a circular giving guidelines and inviting project proposals from departments and agencies at all levels. To promote time- and cost-saving collaboration among departments, 'An integrated approach to planning is encouraged and proposals are to be presented as a package rather than as individual isolated projects' (Subkey 1977: 7). These proposals, many emanating from the District Offices and interdepartmental 'teams' in the localities, are assessed by the EPU in terms of spending ceilings agreed with the Treasury, technical feasibility and economic viability (special studies are commissioned if necessary), and are finally put through an elaborate grading system in which each project is given points according to NEP criteria. Small projects have to be 'efficient' in terms of technical, managerial and other criteria, but are mainly judged on social and political grounds; it is the major projects which are subjected to detailed economic scrutiny (op. cit.: 10). The Operations Division of the EPU has the responsibility of monitoring the progress of the current Plan, and feeding information into the formulation of the next. A separate Implementation Coordination Unit is responsible for ensuring that the various government departments charged with putting the plan into effect do so promptly, efficiently and collaboratively; it has been described variously as the 'hatchetman' (ibid.), and the 'Intensive Care Unit'. 274

Reorganising society Although very much less concerned with the attraction of grants and aid than the plans of other developing countries, the 3MP is much more concerned with international affairs than its predecessors. As an 'open economy', Malaysia's dependence on world markets, particularly those of the OECD countries which absorb more than half the country's exports, is acknowledged, and the economic prospects of these 'First World' countries are carefully assessed (3MP: 37). Malaysia has itself become an aid donor to Bangladesh (see p. 69) and Papua New Guinea, mainly by providing in-service training with organisations like FLDA. Under the 3MP Malaysia contributed M$40 millions to regional agencies and organisations, in recognition of the fact that 'the future of Malaysia and its people is also tied up inextricably to the attainment of peace and harmony in the Southeast Asian region as a whole' (3MP: 106). Malaysia's enthusiastic support for the ASEAN group (including Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines) was stimulated in large measure by the American collapse in Vietnam and mounting fears that the Southeast Asian countries would fall like dominoes to the forces of militant communism. Thus, the most conspicuous innovation of the 3MP is its insistence on 'strengthening our national security' which has turned the 'two prongs' of the NEP (the assault on poverty and restructuring society) into 'three thrusts' (3MP: v). A 'hawkish' attitude pervades the Plan, with many references to 'the re-emergence of the security threat' and 'subversive' or 'antinational elements' (3MP: 9; 37): Through intimidation and attempts to destroy public confidence in the capacity of the Government to provide law and order, they seek to discredit the programmes of a constitutionally elected Government for accelerated economic development with social justice for all... All their actions are in fact aimed at establishing a system of Government which is alien to the ideology of the mass of Malaysian society. (3MP: 10)

The Plan promises that, to confront 'militant communism', 'the government will . . . expand and strengthen its security forces considerably. Mopping up operations and surveillance will be intensified to ensure that all communist elements will be apprehended or annihilated' (3MP: 101). International competition and the fear of conquest have spurred Malaysian planning to an extent very reminiscent of Russian experience (see pp. 11 and 22). For the 3MP period, security spending was tripled to M$3,530 millions. The justifications for this very considerable strengthening of the means of physical coercion at the disposal of the state are interestingly interwoven with 'development' interests: The inter-dependence of the socio-economic development efforts of the Government and the development of its security capabilities cannot be over-emphasised. In the absence of security, social and economic progress will be thwarted. With275

Malaysia - a case study out such progress, on the other hand, the maintenance of the nation's security will become progressively more difficult. (3MP: 10)

The government was particularly concerned about the menace of communist propaganda. The indigenous tribal peoples in the forested areas were especially at risk, and under the rubric of the 1990 Perspective Plan it was decided that they must be 'brought into the mainstream of development and progress' (3MP: 101). Accordingly the 3MP allocated M$22 millions to the Department of Orang Asli Affairs, the agency dealing with the aboriginal peoples, a quarter of which was earmarked for land development (i.e. resettlement) projects (3MP: 420ff.). This has involved the concentration of 'Orang Asli' in FLDA-type schemes, whose purpose and organisation are very strongly evocative of the New Village programme of 1948-60. The populations of the New Villages themselves were also reckoned to be 'at risk', and a somewhat parsimonious M$20 was allocated to them on the understanding that development and welfare efforts would depend essentially on self-help (gotong royong). FLDA and social development

The FLDA schemes provided an admirable bulwark against the security threat. They broke up the jungle areas in which the insurgents operated; settlement was tightly nucleated, well protected and served by reliable communications networks. Moreover, by 'modernising the rural sector' they were deemed to remove those sources of disaffection on which radical ideologies might prey. The 3MP chapter on 'The Sociological, Political and Strategic Dimensions of Development' makes it plain that 'self-reliant progressive communities' (3MP: 98) are the prime ingredients of a healthy, functioning, liberal society: A self-reliant and resilient society consists of communities of people who know their worth and constantly seek to prove it. The community as a group is able to identify and integrate its short and long term needs, strive for the satisfaction of these needs with minimum assistance from the Government and deal with all forms of challenges as individuals and as a community. (3MP: 97)

Such pronouncements mark a shift from an earlier preoccupation with economic criteria to an expressed concern for 'social development' in the 3MP. FLDA experienced a parallel movement: a 'Settler Development Division' was established in 1967 and acquired increasing prominence during the 1970s. Once the technical problems of rubber and oilpalm production had been solved, the problems engendered by a rapidly expanding settler population were beginning to make themselves felt. The official 'definition and "concept"' of settler development is worth quoting in full: 276

FLDA and social development Through settler development FELD A hopes to instil the spirit of willingness to work, self help, betterment of themselves and their families through the settlers own efforts. Settler development also aims to provide each settler and his family sufficient scope and motivation to learn to become self-reliant, progressive and responsible rural people capable of making their own decisions and taking care of their own welfare. It is the intention of settler development to induce and to facilitate the development of a community spirit and community living so that each land scheme becomes a viable, cohesive and progressive rural community. It is the ultimate aim of the settler development to develop and to provide finer settler families, living in better homes, on more productive land and in more progressive communities responsible to the challenges of the present competitive world. (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 86) These attitudes towards the FLDA settlement schemes provide an interesting illustration of official perceptions of the community and its development, discussed in Chapter 2. Many writers have drawn attention to the fact that Malay rural communities are diffuse and unbounded entities: T h e most striking feature . . . is the lack of sociological unity the village is a unit only in certain designated spheres, mostly imposed from outside, either by the administration or as a religious unit. Put in another way, social life revolved around the individual and small clusters of individuals, such as households' (Wilson 1967: 145). In marked contrast to the nucleation of FLDA schemes, village settlement is dispersed along waterways and roads. Communities are not inward-looking, indeed their 'external-relatedness' has often been remarked upon (Husin Ali 1975: 70). Travel and good communications of all kinds are greatly appreciated (Wilson 1967: 50ff.). Such 'traditions' may go far to account for the lack of a corporate 'community spirit' on the FLDA schemes. However, it is not part of FLDA's policy in 'modernising the rural sector' to recreate traditional villages, rather to 'create a semi-urban atmosphere without the loss of rural charm' (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 65). The FLDA planners prefer the notion of 'township', and with 'the Government's urbanization policy' in mind have sought to arrange the housing areas of six or seven schemes into a single residential cluster, which provides economies of scale and the 'rationalisation' of services (op. cit.: 70-1). FLDA schemes are known, to officials and settlers alike, as rancangan, a term which derives from the Malay merancang, to plan. Names like 'Jengka 12' seem to emphasise the formulaic aspects of scheme organisation. The rancangan, inhabited by peneroka, settlers, is not mistaken for a kampong, village. A Bukit Besar settler explained: 'a kampong is a long area, the scheme is round'; it was more like, and would surely become, a town (bandar). FLDA has rarely used the word 'kampong' in naming schemes, although phases within some of the older rubber schemes have acquired informal labels like 'Kampong Bahru' 277

Malaysia - a case study ('New Village') or 'Kampong Balai Ra'ayat' ('Community Centre Village'). The settlement blocks and phases provide some basis for communal identity, and the colour coding used by FLDA to identify the plantation areas, harvested fruit, houses etc. of each phase, sometimes appears on the jerseys of football teams competing in intra-scheme tournaments. The physical uniformity of the schemes is noted with resignation or amusement by the settlers, who often recount experiences of getting lost. One ex-serviceman explained how he put his jungle training to use in orienting himself and devising short-cuts, but suggested that the roofs of each scheme in the Kulai complex should be painted a different colour to prevent people making tiresome mistakes. Various studies, notably that by MacAndrews (1977), make it clear that there is considerable variation in the social organisation of FLDA schemes. There are obvious distinctions among new and longerestablished schemes, those in which the main crop is rubber and the oilpalm schemes, poorer and more affluent schemes, etc. Patterns of recruitment are also salient: early FLDA notions that '50 connected families or more should be moved as a whole into the new land development schemes' have of course proved entirely impracticable, and few settlers are previously acquainted with their neighbours (MacAndrews 1977: 46). Settlers in Pahang state are recruited from all over peninsular Malaysia while those in Johore are mainly local (Hitam 1968). All these factors affect social interaction and the expressed contentment of the settlers. Bilut in Pahang was one of the oldest FLDA projects, an 'unhappy' run-down rubber scheme, remarkable for its ethnic admixture (27% Chinese, 8% Indian) and for its poor community spirit (MacAndrews 1977: 90-121). After a poor start Ulu Jempol, an oilpalm scheme in Pahang, became more sociable, enterprising and corporate, perhaps because the average monthly earnings in 1974 were M$547 more than most FLDA staff received (op. cit.: 166). Bukit Besar, its settlers nearly all from Johore state, was also prosperous, earning in the buoyant days of 1974 an average of M$750 a month from their oilpalm; described by MacAndrews as 'conservative' and 'disciplined', the 394 settler households had been established long enough (between five and ten years) to put down some roots and to set about the emotionally important task of converting the prefabricated wooden houses into more durable, and architecturally less monotonous, structures. Many houses had tapwater (all FLDA schemes are supplied by standpipes) and a few had the luxury of electricity. In accordance with the New Economic Policy, virtually all settlers are now Malay, the 3% of Chinese and Indians being confined to the earlier rubber schemes (MacAndrews 1977: 80, 93). The FLDA rationale is that incompatible cultures, religions and life-styles make ethnically mixed 278

FLDA and social development schemes impracticable. Up to 20% of places are reserved for exservicemen; the large number demobilised after the Emergency caused some official anxiety, and they are certainly conspicuous on the schemes by their greater age, worldly experience and political enthusiasm (op. cit.: 104). In Bukit Besar, 8% of the settlers were ex-servicemen, 66% were formerly rural labourers, 15% 'farmers' or fishermen, and the remainder from a variety of craft and commercial backgrounds (Shamsul Bahrin & Perera 1977: 58). FLDA applicants are screened in their districts of origin by two FLDA officials, the DO, and a senior member of the local state legislature. The effects of this selection process on the economic organisation of the schemes are, as we have seen, far reaching. The schemes do not bear much resemblance to 'real' communities, partly because of their skewed demographic structure. If the coherence of a Malay village depends on the proliferation over time of relationships of kinship and marriage (Husin Ali 1975: 48ff.), then the official exclusion of bachelors drastically reduces the prospects for the emergence of such 'real' social solidarities. Officials remain firmly of the opinion that unmarried men are a liability, more intent on sowing wild oats than honest labour. Settlements like Bukit Besar thus have no genealogical fabric outside individual households. Instead, FLDA has sought universalistic ways of generating community sentiments, notably by the use of Islam and activities centred on the scheme mosque. In 1972 the Kulai complex was the venue of the popular national Koran reading contest. However, FLDA officials recognise that the mosque is not the most suitable environment in which to hold free and frank discussions about scheme affairs - a fact which managers have used from time to time as a device for suppressing complaints. For their part, settlers confide that informal prayer groups often serve as important political nuclei in the schemes, providing opportunities for discussion out of the pervasive official earshot. In the early 1970s FLDA officials tended to suspect any activity which occurred outside the formal, carefully planned schedule. Funeral clubs (syarikat kematian) were an object of particular concern: these were savings associations whose purpose was to indemnify dependents and transport the deceased home to the kampong. FLDA planners felt that these clubs disrupted the carefully calculated financial viability of the schemes, reducing the loan-repayment capacity and detracting from other, approved forms of saving. The solution adopted was to turn funeral clubs into official FLDA insurance schemes. One Kulai manager went so far as to proscribe informal use of scheme colour codes for such things as football teams, arguing that this was an anarchic and potentially divisive use of the official symbols of the Authority. The typical settler has 'little preconceived notion of what moving into a FELDA scheme actually entails' nor can he choose which scheme he 279

Malaysia - a case study will join (MacAndrews 1977: 81). Although aware of the pros and cons of FLDA life, the great majority of established settlers are evidently satisfied, on balance, with their lot. FLDA officials reckon their contentment depends on how deprived they were prior to recruitment. The contrasting experience and attitudes of two Bukit Besar settlers, both born in the 1930s, gives some impression of this. One of the earliers settlers on the scheme, Mohamed Jelani, was chairman of Block A Phase 1 in 1972, and vice-chairman of the scheme council (JKKR). He had little more than an acre of rubber at his home in north Johore state which he sold to finance his move to Bukit Besar in 1968. A sober and earnest man, he was enthusiastic about FLDA management and, asked to comment on the differences between life in the villages and on the schemes, he replied that in the former there was much freedom - freedom to be idle and unambitious. FLDA's purpose was to enable people like himself to make progress, and this necessarily meant a loss of freedom. He was passionate about his children's education, and confident that they would find rewarding city jobs. As for the future, he felt it unlikely that the settlers would take over Bukit Besar when they acquired their certificates of tenure; it would be in everyone's interests for FLDA management to remain - but in any case 'the future is with the government'. A few years older, Mahadi took a more jaundiced view of his life as a settler. A former catering corps staff sergeant he moved to Bukit Besar in 1971, taking the place of a settler who dropped out. When his catering business in Johore Bahru ran into financial trouble he applied for admission to FLDA, taking advantage of preferential terms for exservicemen. Friends had told him of the great wealth which awaited him at Bukit Besar, but he found that family expenses were rapidly exhausting his savings. He lamented: 'I cannot think why I joined FLDA; I wake up in the night and ask myself - why have I done this thing?' He recognised that he was accustomed to a higher living standard than his neighbours from poor village backgrounds. However, his superior literacy, experience and age had assured him the position of mandor and chairman of his Block. Of his daily work he remarked: 'all I have to do is go around with a paper and pencil'. He was pessimistic about the future but determined that his seven children would not share his predicament. If he found a better opportunity elsewhere he would take it promptly. However he was aware that, although five out of 108 settlers in his Phase had quit, there were more than 15,000 FLDA applicants waiting to take his place. The Fourth Malaysia Plan: reorganising the polity

In his introduction to the Fourth Malaysia Plan (1981-5) the Prime Minister, Datuk Hussein Onn, noted that there had been 'substantial 280

Fig. 5.5. 'Sectoral Development Programmes' by the chapter headings in the four successive Malaysia Plans, 1966-85 FIRST MALAYSIA PLAN 1966-70 (190 pages)

2nd MALAYSIA PLAN 1971-1975 (267 pages)

3rd MALAYSIA PLAN 1976-1980 (430 pages)

4th MALAYSIA PLAN 1981-1985 (413 pages)

1. Agriculture and rural development

1. Agriculture, forestry — and fishing

-1. Agriculture, forestry and fishing

1. Agriculture, livestock, fisheries and forestry

2. Manufacturing, construction and mining ^

2. Manufacturing

- 2. Manufacturing

-2. Manufacturing

*•«•.

^ 3 . Commerce, tourism^ mining and construction"

* 3. Commerce, finance, real estate and tourism

. -3. Mining 4. Housing -

3. Transport and communications

- 4. Transport and communications

- 5. Transport and communications

4. Utilities -

-5. Utilities

- 6 . Utilities

5. Education and training

- 6. Education and training

- 7. Education and training

6. Health and family planning

•7. Health and family planning

- 8. Health and family v planning

4. Mining - 5. Transport and communications 6. Energy and utilities - 7. Education and training \

7. Social and community • - 8. Social and community — - - 9 . Community services and general administration services services 8. General administration

281

9. General administration'

8. Housing 9. Health and social welfare

\

10. Culture, community development', security and general administration

Malaysia - a case study progress in the implementation of the New Economic Policy' (4MP: vii). During the 1970s there had been a 4.9% annual increase in real per capita income and those below the official poverty line had dropped from 49.3% of the population to 29.2% (4MP: 1-4). Prices had been relatively stable, inflation much lower than in other countries, there had been a healthy increase in savings and a favourable balance of payments. Investment, private and public, had increased at an average of about 12% per annum, and unemployment had fallen from 7.8% to 5.3% of the workforce (4MP: 21, 84). Moreover, the NEP had ensured that development planning and public expenditure were not concentrated around the capital: 'In Malaysia, the conventional wisdom about neglected rural areas is also invalid' (Meerman 1979: 322). More important, aggregate statistical evidence indicated that, in accordance with the NEP, the benefits of development were being directed towards the Malays. During the 1970s the mean monthly household incomes of the Malays increased by 10.6% annually, compared with 9.9% for the Indians and 8.4% for the Chinese (4MP: 37). Calculating the distribution of public services in terms of their cost, Meerman discovered that Malays benefited by M$156 per capita, the Indians by M$109, and the Chinese by M$90 (1979: 320-1); 'Most of those who benefit from unrequited public services are Malayan; where fees for service predominate, the principal consumers are the Chinese' (op. cit.: 8). Nevertheless, public assessment of the NEP has proved surprisingly difficult. Although 'national unity' and 'ethnic balance' are basic goals of development, planners have insisted that 'it is most important that all programmes are not perceived and construed in terms of ethnological interests' (3MP: 93), and that the idea that planning is intended to benefit only the Malays is 'a dangerous misconception about the national goals of poverty eradication and restructuring society'(3MP: 92). The tendency to translate economic distinctions among the races into rural-urban differences has greatly complicated matters: poverty is often treated and assessed as if it were essentially a rural and a Malay affair. It seems that in development policies, ethnicity has different meanings in the rural and urban contexts: in the countryside, where the Malays predominate, an ideal of ethnic balance among discrete and enduring ethnic segments seems to prevail. Thus, the 3MP expresses concern that 'the Chinese share of employment in agriculture and utilities has not grown in line with the long term target of increasing their share in these sectors' (3MP: 143). The Malay land reservations still prevent the development of Chinese smallholdings, and the assumption that Chinese rural wage labour should compensate for Malay movement to the towns and urban growth is absurd, and has no basis in prescribed policy. In the towns, where the Chinese predominate, development is much more laissez faire and seems 282

Reorganising the polity to presume the dissolution of ethnic solidarities. The 4MP alludes to 'surveys' which point to reduced segregation in patterns of residence and greater collaboration in business (4MP: 147), and in official eyes, 'urban poverty is . . . a multiracial problem' (3MP: 92). The preoccupation with race, and with patterns of residence and occupation has diverted attention from one of the basic premises of the NEP, that 'no group in the country need . . . experience any loss or feel any sense of deprivation' (3MP: 89). The particular meaning which the NEP has given to the notion of 'redistribution with growth' cannot disguise the fact that a decade of development has left many Malaysians relatively poorer. Meerman notes that 'the highest 5 per cent of the population receive more than 27 per cent of total income, while the lowest decile of the population receive only 1.78 per cent. The mean rate at which income is generated by the highest 5 per cent is thus more than thirty times the rate at which it is generated by the lowest decile' (1979: 324). While income inequality was slightly reduced between ethnic groups, within them it increased markedly; GNP doubled between 1957 and 1970 but the share of the poorest 20% of Malaysians dropped from 5.8% to 4%, while the top 20% increased their share from 34% to 40% (Lim & Anderson 1979: 35). Meerman's calculation of the benefits of public spending in terms of wealth rather than ethnic identity is also revealing: the poorest 20% of the population benefited by M$109 per capita, while each ascending quintile benefited by M$133, M$131, M$128 and M$142 respectively; Meerman points out that the richest group is most heavily subsidised in their privileged access to costly higher education (1979: 320-1). It is certainly true that rates of taxation are higher in Malaysia than in most other developing countries and that 'the aggregate net benefits of the poor are paid for by the rich' (op. cit.: 324); nevertheless the NEP has done little to inhibit the polarisation of income and wealth, and has offered little comfort for those who are poor, Chinese, and living in Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh or Penang. The ownership of productive resources remains very unequally distributed. For example, Lim and Anderson point out that the twenty-seven largest business corporations (1% of the total number of registered companies) own about 33% of total assets (1979: 37) and that 'various mechanisms' which have very little to do with development planning serve to 'increase the power and cohesion of this small propertied class' (op. cit.: 48). Class formation and disparities of wealth are very sensitive subjects in Malaysia, but are generally seen as an inevitable consequence of development and as an antidote to ethnicity. The intention of the NEP to 'eliminate the identification of race with economic function' is readily taken to imply increasing the proportion of Malays in the middle class. In 1972 a senior official of MARA (the organisation charged with 'uplifting' the 283

Malaysia - a case study Bumiputra) insisted that success would ultimately be measured in the number of MARA-sponsored millionaires. The middle class takes great pride in its degree of ethnic integration: in the clubs of Kuala Lumpur, Chinese businessmen and senior Malay officials rub shoulders affably. Occupational specialisation has been diminishing: 'the New Economic Policy has in fact led to reshuffling of the occupational hierarchy among Malay public servants' (Snodgrass 1980: 234). Meerman found that 'Malay professionals were highly mobile within the public sector and between public and private sectors' (1979: 35). Middle class opinions diverge about the practicability and desirability of ethnic integration in Malaysian society at large; some point out that an integrated workforce would easily fall victim to communist propaganda - thus providing some confirmation for the marxist assumption that ethnicity is a kind of false consciousness perpetuated by the bourgeoisie for its own purposes. In 1977 a concerted strike of Chinese, Malay and Indian taxi-drivers was discussed with great interest by Malaysian officials who were divided in their opinions about whether this kind of solidarity was a healthy or unhealthy tendency. While some radical critics have seen the NEP and its plea for 'national unity' as a device for consolidating the interest of a national bourgeoisie and sustaining the 'vicious circle of poverty and underdevelopment in the traditional sector' (Shamsul Amri 1979a: 7), none has spoken with optimism about the prospect for working class solidarities among peasants, estate workers and the urban workforce (v. Husin Ali 1975:25). Among the masses, perceptions of differentiation remain resolutely within the ethnic idiom. The urban labour force is sternly controlled: for example, in 1975 a 'Code of Conduct for Industrial Harmony' sought to ensure that 'retrenchment of workers would not be resorted to except as a last resort' (3MP: 131). In the rural areas, the ruling Malay class has always been prominent (although known by no collective term), but the ra'ayat, peasantry, have no marked self-conscious identity and only a vague perception of categoric differences of wealth among themselves (Husin Ali 1975: 89). Nevertheless, there have been important class-like expressions of solidarity - strikes, local riots and student demonstrations - to which the Malaysian authorities have responded sternly, and given minimal publicity. Of particular interest are a series of land occupations by peasants in the state of Selangor during the 1960s (op. cit.: 157-60), which seem to confirm the view that land reform is necessary, and that FLDA has met with only limited success in satisfying land hunger and releasing resources for development (Snodgrass 1980: 285). Increasing experience of those 'contradictions' in planning surveyed in Chapter 4 has resulted in intensified efforts to 'depoliticise' development in Malaysia. This is very evident in the Third and Fourth Malaysia Plans 284

Reorganising the polity and in the desire of the 'Barisan Nasional' (Coalition Government) 'to strengthen political consensus and reduce "politicking" so that more time and resources could be devoted to national development' (4MP: 145). The Barisan was established 'to provide a wider multiracial basis of government in the best democratic tradition' and to avoid 'open intemperate debate and party politics based on sectional interests [which] could divert the energies of Malaysians from the tasks of nation building'; it 'lent itself to the resolution of sensitive national issues within the structure of political consensus' (3MP: 99). For Husin Ali (1975: 34) and others, the Barisan is an expression of the political cohesion of the bourgeoisie. Through the ethnically distinct political parties which it convenes, a network of political patronage extends outwards to the population at large. Politicians and civil servants interact in this network, which effectively controls and constrains the expression of public interests. The local government structure is weak and inert. Beaglehole points out that representative councils date from 1950 when town boards were set up; two years later elected councils were extended to selected localities, notably the Chinese New Villages, but after 1957 there was a 'rapid erosion' of local government (1976: 54-6). For various reasons, including maladministration, the councils were turned over to state-appointed boards and at the same time the role of the District Officer was greatly enhanced (ibid.). Scott described the DO in the 1960s as 'a virtual sovereign in the often substantial territory under his jurisdiction' (1968: 216). Sub-district and village officials serve mainly as conciliators and mediators, counting heavily on informal persuasive capacities in their relations with the people (Husin Ali 1975). The apparent passivity of the rural Malays and the importance of patronage has been attributed by Wilson to long-standing traditions of obedience to the Sultan: Little or no political action is initiated from within the village, and village involvement is almost entirely a result of action from above. Political officials above the village level are professional civil servants and seldom native to the areas they administer, which thereby increases the separation between village and state. At the individual level, the relationship between officials and villagers is a formal and impersonal one, hence undesirable to the village Malay. (Wilson 1967: 111) Official attitudes towards the political interests and capacities of ordinary Malaysians are deeply ambivalent. One senior planner recently insisted that the public was 'politically mature', sensitive to 'the national good' as well as to their individual rights and responsibilities. This is largely wishful thinking; officials more often complain of limited public understanding of government policies, programmes and services, and point out that villagers fail to distinguish among the various state and federal bureaucracies, referring to FLDA, MARA or the Agriculture Department indiscriminately as 'kerajaan\ 'government' (Meerman 1979: 236). In the 285

Malaysia - a case study name of development, villages have been inundated with a confusing array of committees, offices and agencies. Foremost of these is the Jawatankuasa Kemajuan dan Keselamatan Kampong (JKKK), a committee which is intended to provide 'a link between the Government and the people at grass-root level on matters pertaining to development and security of villages' (4MP: 149). In official eyes the JKKKs 'became effective channels of communication between development agencies and the people' (ibid.), but according to Husin Ali 'most of the committees exist only in name' (1975: 122). Repeated efforts to activate this line of communication recognise the 'need for interest articulation', but official attitudes seem unilateral: 'Government will endeavour to improve the functioning of the village Development and Security Committees by ensuring that committee members appointed from the village are made more responsible for the implementation of the 3MP' (3MP: 100). It is clear that in the villages informal networks of patronage have more meaning, and perhaps more legitimacy, than the array of official structures. Husin Ali sees the landlord, the party functionary and the local bureaucrat as a political 'triad' in Malay rural communities, and the principal nexus of communications to the wider world (1975: 162). Appointment from above has the tendency to endow a single prominent individual with more official roles than he can manage - thirteen in one recent case from Perlis state. In the circumstances, official attitudes to public participation seem very demanding: 'accessibility is a reciprocal process', the 3MP complains; government can make services available, but not on a 'houseto-house basis'. The people have 'at least to identify the kinds of services and assistance needed, approach the proper authorities and make formal representation of their problems' (3MP: 98). In so doing, they are expected to show a degree of restraint and formal orthodoxy: There must be less political pressure that could result in policy decisions made at the highest level being circumvented or flouted. Such pressure, while necessary for ensuring that policies are implemented, becomes counter-productive when applied to the managerial aspects of work in a way which undermines administrative neutrality and rationality. (3MP: 102)

FLDA officials claim that settlers are politically more interested and adventurous than ordinary villagers, and have a 'canny instinct for going straight to the top when they feel aggrieved' (MacAndrews 1977: 66). There have also been disconcerting acts of collective hostility. During the 1970s, price fluctuations and management policies on savings and loan repayments prompted that action peculiar to estate agriculture in Asia, the 'kerau': FLDA officials were confined to their offices by crowds for lengthy periods. Political party conflict is unimportant as the great majority of settlers are Malay UMNO supporters (op. cit.: 189), but 286

Reorganising the polity FLDA remains suspicious of state and federal politicians, believing that they regard the schemes as 'vote banks', and cash in on settler disaffection. Management response to complaints has been to try to improve amenities, to promote 'responsible leadership and participation', and to enter into regular 'Dialogue' with its charges. It has had some success in ensuring that the political interests of settlers are managed within the FLDA hierarchy. Each Block has its own committee, two or three of which elect a representative for the Jawatankuasa Kemajuan dan Keselamatan Rancangan (JKKR), FLDA's own version of the JKKK. These representatives sit with FLDA officials and the local police chief, headmaster, clinic superintendent and Imam; the scheme manager takes the chair but by convention the vice-chairman is a settler who, in established schemes like Bukit Besar, can exert an important mediating and moderating influence (MacAndrews 1977: 187). Each scheme is represented on a regional JKKR council and then (still within the FLDA rubric) on the National JKKR. A single settler representative sits on the FLDA Board of Directors. Bukit Besar settlers felt that at every level their representation was too weak, but officials claim that they are given 'a tough time' at meetings by vocal and persistent spokesmen. FLDA takes pride in the fact that the JKKR is (at least in part) a 'democratically elected body', unlike its village counterpart which is appointed by the District Officer. There has therefore been general dissatisfaction at the Minister of Lands' recent decision to exercise the right to appoint JKKR vice-chairmen. Perhaps the most sinister intrusion of the state into community affairs has been the establishment of Ikatan Relawan Rakyat (RELA), committees 'formed to assist the security forces in facing any subversive and undesirable elements threatening the security and stability of these villages' (4MP: 148). Since 1975 RELA, and its urban counterpart Rukun Tetangga, has obliged all male citizens between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five to act as vigilantes in their neighbourhoods, village, estate, mining compound or FLDA scheme. In areas of communist insurgency villagers are armed, trained and paid to supplement the security forces. For Rukun Tetangga, urban areas are divided into 'sectors' with an elected committee, and then into ten-house groups. Citizens on vigilante patrol have the powers of a constable and committees are obliged to register the movements of individuals in and out of their sectors. Their brief includes 'observing and enquiring into matters affecting . . . the morals of residents' (ORT1976: 26), and authorised household heads are obliged to report any offence committed or planned by any family member over the age of fourteen. Introducing Rukun Tetangga in 1975, Tun Abdul Razak declared that it provided 'every citizen and resident irrespective of rank or status, whether he is a minister or an executive, a 287

Malaysia - a case study labourer or a businessman . . . a way to prove his loyalty to the nation the nation that provides him with livelihood and protection' (op. cit.: 2). Running closely in parallel with Rukun Tetangga is a Community Relations Programme, organised by the Department of National Unity: This new programme is based on the concept of "Our Community, the Nation". Its underlying rationale is, the more the individuals who make up a community know and understand each other and the greater the link between them and the local authority concerned the better is their relationship with the nation state' (DNU 1975: 1). Its purpose is to persuade 'the various racial groups to interact in a very positive way not only between themselves but between them and the government' (op. cit.: 4). Community Relations Officers have been seeking to establish Community Relations Councils in some forty-five towns and cities, and to organise recreational and other activities which bring the different races together. 'Discipline' is a word much used by the Malaysian government in its recent exhortations to the public. Briefing a small group of visitors to the National Operations Room in 1981, a senior official of the Implementation Coordination Unit explained that 'our first interest is the solidarity and salvation of the polity'. He described the task of government as 'holding the centre', maintaining a delicate political equilibrium which required that there would be 'no yielding to extremism'. The greatest cause for concern is the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism among the Malays, a particular source of embarrassment to a government which nevertheless wishes to affirm its identity as an Islamic state. The Fourth Malaysia Plan is the first to include the Rukunegara as a frontispiece, and reiterates very bluntly the fragility of national unity and political order: 'The May 1969 incident taught the nation a bitter lesson and showed that unrestricted, emotional and extreme appeals to communal issues were detrimental to peace and stability' (4MP: 145). The Plan introduces a new key phrase: 'security and social justice' (4MP: 8), and declares that 'No nation, however prosperous, will remain viable and secure if its citizens are disunited and lack a strong sense of commitment to the nation' (4MP: 145). However, 'the interdependence of socio-economic development and national security' is seen as threatened by 'the recent changes in the geopolitical situation - particularly in Southeast Asia' (4MP: 7), as well as by internal disunity. The American defeat in Vietnam and the influx of refugees 'brought a new set of problems', and in the face of 'superpower rivalry' there was a need for 'adequate and firm measures . . . to protect the nation's sovereignty' (4MP: 185). Politicians and officials in Malaysia are very sensitive to external criticism, adamant in their rejection of socialism and defensive about the legality and equity of racial policies. 288

Towards 1990 - and thereafter One current explanation is that the preferential treatment of the Bumiputra peoples is an expression of national consensus, a more moderate version of American 'Affirmative Action' policies which (it is argued) are less well-grounded on Constitution than they are in Malaysia. Nevertheless, the government has not done much to dissolve the racial categories which remain the most overt expression of disunity. An ominous distinction is now being made in official documents between 'Bumiputras' and 'Immigrant Citizens' (ICU 1981: 8); this is interestingly matched by a resurgence of religious identity among the Chinese and Indians as well as the Malays, a redefinition of ethnicity which makes play on freedoms which are constitutionally guaranteed. The hardening of attitudes is attributable at least in part to the well-known opinions of the present Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad. Dr Mahathir is regarded in some respects as a reincarnation of Tun Abdul Razak. He has done much to abet the revival of the technocratic approach to planning and has even promised reintroduction of the District Red Book system. Much faith is now placed on the 'National Integrated Data Systems' (NIDS) which were established to 'facilitate centralization and standardization of the compilation of data important for planning, monitoring and evaluation' (4MP: 188). Although there is much difficulty in keeping information up to date, 26,000 development projects can be compared, abstracted and evaluated on elaborate display equipment in the National Operations Room. In the words of an ICU official, this is used to 'empiricise some elements of public policy' and to explain such policy to 'interest groups' consulted by government. Towards 1990 - and thereafter

Malaysian officials believe that they have adequate expertise in macroplanning, and that what is now required are better sectoral programmes and more efficient implementation. 'Control is now the problem', declared a senior planning official in 1981; 'we have to ensure the delivery of outputs, we must turn a nation of planners into a nation of doers'. In many respects, Malaysian planners have put the clock back to the late 1950s, to a period in which democracy and planning were seen as synonymous rather than contradictory. Phrases like 'the trickle-down effect' have re-emerged, and the intractable problems of distribution receive less emphasis than the need for sustained growth. During the 1970s Malaysia very slightly improved its position just inside the wealthier half of the world's nations, its per capita GNP rising from US$290 in 1969 to US$1,090 in 1980. To what extent this sustained progress is attributable to good planning or to good fortune is unclear. The 1970s were certainly kind to the Malaysian economy: the price of 289

Malaysia - a case study Figure 5.6. Contribution of agriculture, manufacturing and government services to Malaysian GDP, 1970-90

Agriculture Manufacturing Government services

1970

1980

1990

30.8% 13.4% 11.1%

22.2% 20.5% 13.0%

14.4% 26.6% 14.2%

Source: 4MP: 160-1.

palm oil remained buoyant, there was a remarkable recovery in rubber and tin prices, and demand for forest timber remained high. Malaysia had the good luck to strike oil and reserves of natural gas - the dream of every poor country. Nevertheless, looking ahead to the 1980s, planners have pointed out that very high growth rates in the region of 8% per annum must be sustained if the goals of the NEP are to be achieved. It is recognised that increasing emphasis on manufacturing will force Malaysia into high competitive markets, demanding the greatest efficiency and good management (4MP: 156-7). For the 4MP period FLDA remains the largest single recipient of public funds, receiving M$2,040 millions, or 5.2% of the total allocation (4MP: 239ff.). Notwithstanding the declining role of agriculture in the 1980s (see Figure 5.6), FLDA is officially regarded as an efficient export earner and employer, stimulating economic growth and 'urbanisation'. What happens after the New Economic Policy deadline of 1990 is now beginning to exercise the imagination of politicians and planners. A recent document envisages a 'property-owning democracy' (ICU 1981: 30) in which the 'invisible hand' of a free market economy will manage Malaysian affairs. 'The Malaysian government firmly believes that private initiative and enterprise should be the principal engine of growth in the country's economy' (op. cit.: 7). To this end, planners profess to be taking a closer interest in the private sector, seeking to 'relax rules and collapse barriers'. The declared intention to 'restore' a laissez faire economy in Malaysia leaves unanswered such obvious questions as how successfully the Bumiputra will manage their share of national wealth when it has finally been diverted into their hands. It also raises a series of hypothetical questions about the last thirty years of planned state intervention: would a laissez faire economy have resulted in a faster or slower rate of growth? Would it have brought greater or less polarisation of incomes and wealth? Has the NEP staved off racial holocaust at the cost of restraining the 'natural' entrepreneurial capacities of the Chinese? The virtues and vices of planning are becoming a keen subject of 290

Summary and conclusion debate in Malaysia. It is now generally understood that the choice is not a narrowly domestic one, but is largely forced upon it by the history of Malaysia's involvement as a state in the twentieth-century world. As the 1990 deadline of the NEP approaches, official determination to regard planning as a phase rather than as the driving force of development loses credibility. Already Malaysian planners are assembling a new Perspective Plan, a successor to the NEP, to carry the country into the twenty-first century. There are some who feel that a new and imaginative vision of the country's future is now imperative - something grander and more coherent than the Rukunegara and the NEP. But there are many others who feel that such speculation would create unbearable political stress. Arguing the necessity of short-term expedients, the latter have helped to re-establish a firmly technocratic approach to planned development, although even they are aware that such an approach must place increasing demands on the power and authority of the state. Summary and conclusion

In explaining the meanings, purposes and practices of planned development in Malaysia, we began with an historical sketch of the emergence of the plural society and the colonial and post-colonial state. Military action against post-war communist insurgency provided a model for rigorous centralised planning efforts - notwithstanding the Federal constitution. These efforts were consolidated by a global enthusiasm for economic development, by the availability of foreign aid and expertise, and by nationalist zeal at home. In the 1950s Malaysia was already establishing para-statal agencies like FLD A to put the new growth policies into effect. The 1969 race riots in Kuala Lumpur were a major trauma which led to a consolidation of state power, a redefinition of the relationship between state and people, and a reassertion of the need for integrated national planning. From this 'revolutionary' period emanated the National Ideology, the New Economic Policy, and the Second, Third and Fourth Malaysia Plans. In these the state (much abetted by organisations like the World Bank) found in FLD A a powerful instrument for the pursuit of its own version of 'redistribution with growth'. The imperative of centralised control, mediated by the increasingly complex FLD A apparatus, has had pervasive consequences for the lives of the people accommodated on FLD A settlement schemes. World recession and regional political apprehensions have brought a shift - expressed repeatedly in the Fourth Plan - towards tougher political and economic controls. Today, Malaysia's commitment to planning is as strong, and as grimly resolute, as ever. There has been a reassertion of older development doctrines: a faith in techniques, in replicable projects, 291

Malaysia - a case study and in organisations like cooperatives and councils. The long-term deadline of 1990, set by planners in the early 1970s as the target date for the restructuring of Malaysian society, steadily approaches and it is becoming increasingly evident that the hoped-for reversion to an unplanned, free market economy is improbable. The dependence of the state on planned development is now as evident as the dependence of Malaysian society on the mediating capacities of the state. The question today is not whether Malaysia should have national plans, but how the state should plan, and for what long-term purposes. What is missing today is some clear moral and political statement about these long-term purposes; renewed faith in the technical efficiency of planning per se can be no substitute. If the state were to end its reformist endeavours, the initiative would certainly pass to interests in Malaysia's segmented population. Such an eventuality would probably be very costly in human lives, and it is difficult to see how such turmoil could yield political and social structures which are clearly preferable to those which prevail today.

292

Conclusion: Anthropology and planned development

This book has sought to demonstrate how anthropologists can usefully turn their interests and aptitudes to the study of development institutions. In this concluding chapter we discuss the often sceptical attitudes of anthropologists to planned development. We argue that rather than evading involvement in planning we should seek to make a more appropriate contribution to it by applying our interest in social structure and process, and in the diversity of human societies, to the urgent task of proposing and analysing alternative forms of social organisation. As we have insisted in previous chapters, it is only when we have more realistic, rational and humane images of our collective future that coherent planning will become practicable.

As a major force for change in the contemporary world planned development affects, broadly and intricately, the lives of ordinary people who are the subjects of anthropological enquiry. An interest in development is therefore inescapable, but there is a marked lack of agreement among anthropologists in attitudes to planning, particularly with regard to their active involvement. The strength of feeling which debate about these matters can arouse says a great deal about the nature of the discipline and the vocation of its disciples. For anthropologists, the world of planned development is full of painful contradictions: the virtues and vices of state intervention, the costs and benefits of primitive ways of life, the moral and political dilemmas of active commitment or passive disengagement. We would insist that such contradictions cannot be evaded, and that the efforts to resolve them are essential if anthropology is to have intellectual vigour and utility. An anthropology which studiously avoids these problems is unlikely to make any contribution to human welfare and progress. Nevertheless, there are still many anthropologists who eschew development, and who find any practical involvement in planning distasteful. I t is not the business of anthropologists', they might say, 'to tell people what to do.' The most conspicuous apology for this attitude seems to be a lack of disciplin293

Conclusion ary competence: the training, skills and experience of anthropologists are not appropriate to policy-making and planning - or even to the study of such things. They are 'macro' phenomena and therefore beyond the intellectual reach of anthropology, although their long-term consequences at the 'micro' level are, admittedly, of some interest. A more emotive reason for this kind of disengagement arises from the dilemma of subjective involvement and scientific attitude in which most anthropologists find themselves: if we are engaged in a peculiarly intimate study of social values, it is particularly difficult to make those value judgments which a practical involvement in development demands. For some, social prescription would betray the scientific inexactness of anthropological data, and for others it would overtax those delicately subjective interpretations on which anthropological research ultimately depends. The notion that anthropology is more incapacitated than other branches of social science in these matters of value judgment is hardly valid. If anthropology is less competent in the study and practice of development, it is largely because of a disciplinary division of labour which has arisen since the Second World War. The hegemony of economics has been established by virtue of its technical capacity to schematise and propose strategies for growth. As a profession, economics has accordingly found its own material rewards in the development process. The practical involvement of political scientists has, on the other hand, been brief and painful: their intrusions into the vexed areas of policy and administration brought them into abrasive contact with the prime objects of their enquiries, the politicians, and by the end of the 1960s they were categorically personae non gratae in many Third World countries. For their part, anthropologists and sociologists have been relegated, or have relegated themselves, to a residual role in the implementation of projects: they have been employed very largely as pathologists, picking over the corpses of defunct development enterprises and performing intricate structural-functional autopsies. The pious hope that these will advise future planning efforts is usually frustrated by the reluctance of policy makers and planners- to learn from the testimony of the negative case. Only more recently have anthropologists and sociologists been invited to contribute to the preparation of projects, largely in an effort to forestall those 'social obstacles' on which so many development efforts founder. So far, they have contributed very little to the construction of national plans, or the policies which underlie them. If they propose to do so, a conspectus of the kind undertaken in this book will certainly be necessary. The idea that the methods and analytical categories of anthropology are appropriate only to the study of small, exotic, peripheral societies is absurd and debilitating. An inspection of the literature will soon make it 294

Anthropology and planned development evident that anthropologists have dealt as frequently with large as with small populations, with state formations as well as isolated tribal settlements, and with cities, factories and offices as well as peasant farms. Our proper study is mankind, and an anthropology which insists that it is concerned with communities on the periphery of the modern world will marginalise itself: if it chooses to deal only with the consequences of planned development rather than its causes, its history, structure and processes, it will succeed only in casting itself as one of the problems of development. The solutions will remain definitively beyond its grasp. In the face of such criticism, many anthropologists would argue that planned development properly falls within the competence of other disciplines, as part of a necessary division of academic labour. In particular, they might point out that sociology, with its quantitative techniques and experience of large-scale, modern society, should be able to make a more constructive contribution to planning. This only reinforces the existing biases of planning, and allows the anthropological contribution to go by default. One of the advantages of the post-war interest in development is the way that it has challenged disciplinary boundaries and proprieties: new phenomena called for a reaggregation of disciplinary capacities, but there are many social scientists - particularly anthropologists - who still regard this as a dangerous transgression and a threat to the coherence of established disciplines. However, it is clear that fastidious orthodoxy will leave large areas of darkness in our understanding of a changing world. There is always something to be gained from exposing the subject matter of one discipline to the experience of another; by extending anthropology into the realm of the development planner, this book has sought to demonstrate that transgression, for all its temerity, affords some illumination. The hostility with which some anthropologists regard planned development derives largely from a populist commitment to the people among whom they do fieldwork. These are seen as the 'victims' of modernisation, and the fact that economists, sociologists and political scientists are more closely associated with oppressive officialdom reinforces the disciplinary barrier. In the extreme view, development is seen as exogenous to anthropology and its subject matter; this is accompanied by feelings of alienation, remoteness, and a belief that modernising forces are both beyond manipulation and, very largely, beying comprehension. As Belshaw remarks, modernising zeal is the vocation of few, if any, anthropologists; they 'choose their careers for various reasons, which include being positively intrigued by the exotic and by the variety of man's expression, by a desire to travel and to live in other places, by a search for not otherwise easily achieved adventure, and by a detachment from, a disenchantment with, and a critique of their own societies' (1976: 30). With 295

Conclusion such motivation, the grievance of some anthropologists against the perpetrators of development is personal and emotional. For what must be the majority of anthropologists, the issue is not now whether we might or ought to make value judgments as part of our work, but that we do. The danger is that our attitudes may lead us into sins of omission or commission: many anthropologists fear that their work may inadvertently harm the people they wish to protect, perhaps by bringing them to the attention of officialdom or predatory economic and political forces. Some have therefore adopted an explicitly conservative attitude, asserting the relative value of exotic cultures, the practical and aesthetic utility of ways of life which are still largely disengaged from the metropolitan world. Anthropologists have been very active in 'social defence' organisations like Survival International, laudably screening primitive peoples from the physical, material, political and other predations of the outside world. Of obvious importance to forest dwellers in the Amazon, Central Africa or Southeast Asia, this protection has been extended to other peripheral peoples, notably nomadic pastoralists. Occasionally it has led anthropologists into acts of intervention and mediation which have had, in at least one case, tragic consequences (Flood 1975a, 1975b; Robertson 1975b; Lewis 1975). The populist urge among anthropologists is very strong (manifest in the 'my people' syndrome for which we are notorious). It has led some to a hostile rejection of intrusive market forces - 'capitalism' in the loosely socialist ideology of the populist - and even to a withdrawal from the academic institutions of anthropology itself (Adams 1979). The naive assumption that truth and virtue rest with ordinary, simple folk, and not with the political authority of the state, inspires an outright rejection of national development planning. An extreme version of what we might call 'ethno-populism' may be found in Pierre Clastres' Society against the State (1977): the essays in this volume argue that primitive society has a cultural (one is tempted to say 'magical') capacity to resist the institutionalisation of coercive power, and thus the growth of state structures. Clastres objects to civilisation-centred images of primitive 'stateless' societies being somehow deficient, and argues for a 'Copernican revolution' in which state power is seen as a pathological exception rather than the natural rule. On his ethnographic understanding of the Andean Tupi-Guarani Indians he writes in praise of 'primitive society - essentially egalitarian society' (op. cit.: 167), whose science is, unlike ours, 'gay', expressed in merry but meaningful mythologising (op. cit.: 18, 127). Clastres asserts that 'it is not possible for the state to arise from within primitive society' (op. cit.: 181), indeed 'the history of people without history is the history of their struggle against the State' (op. cit.: 186). Primitive values, reified if not anthropomorphised, have prophylactic 296

Anthropology and planned development powers of their own: 'Indian cultures are cultures anxious to reject a power that fascinates them . . . ' (op. cit.: 37). Notwithstanding its transparent flaws, Clastres' book has inspired younger anthropologists irked by superordinate authority and drawn by the age-old attraction of a simpler and more communitarian way of life, closer to nature. However, this enthusiasm for tradition is invariably only one side of the populist coin. The trauma of fieldwork, the experience of hunger, disease, violence or infant mortality, makes the necessity of some kind of progress starkly evident to the anthropologist. The dilemma - an immediate and practical one for many anthropologists - is how the blessings of the external, modern world can be brought to the internal world without damaging its authentic virtues. However alienated they may feel, anthropologists remain rooted in their own societies. However much they may seek a syncretic ideal, a resolution of the bipolarity of values they experience, in the long run their interest in exotic worlds is for what they can teach us, not for what we can teach them. Peter Berger has drawn attention to the importance of this as a motive for those interested in 'development': the progress of people in poor, peripheral countries has become 'a focus of redemptive aspirations for some people in the rich countries of the West, particularly among intellectuals and the young. There is a certain vicariousness in the expectations of redemption, a kind of "Zionism" with regard to the struggles of Third World societies. Perhaps what is at work here is an archaic motif, that of simpler and purer lands far away, from which some healing secret may be learned' (P. Berger 1977: 33). We would not wish to disparage such sentiments. We would insist, rather, that they should be understood, the dilemma of values made explicit, and our acts of mediation thoroughly and overtly debated. A retreat from idealism will contribute nothing. Anthropologists should be reminded that images of the noble savage and of exotic communitarian societies have been a fundamental theme in Utopian speculation. Travellers, ethnographers, and latterly anthropologists themselves have provided the inspiration for counterfactual images of society which, as we have argued in Chapter 4, have in turn inspired western social science. Tahiti, Persia, China, the Inca civilisation; peoples in distant islands, valleys or other inaccessible places, isolated from our own history and geography, have given us accounts (perfected, of course, in the telling) of how we might have been, or what we might be. One writer has gone so far as to trace the inspiration of accounts of the Incas through to the formulation of the American Constitution, pointing out that this has in turn become a latter-day Utopia for new nations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Morgan 1946). Some anthropologists might regard their own proximity to this ethnographic source of Utopian speculation as 297

Conclusion an embarrassment, a liability, or a danger. Here we would argue the contrary: that comparative anthropology has been and should remain a vital source of alternative social images, a conspectus of the diversity of human development and adaptation, a challenge to singular, monotypical views of progress, and a reminder of the particularity of our own society. Most anthropologists would wish their own social evaluations to remain implicit, seeking to portray exotic societies as they are. In some respects this has made ethnographic accounts look more like the classic literary Utopias, emphasising social, geographical and historical isolation. The insistence that each little world should be evaluated in its own terms has created awkward disjunctions, and made comparison very difficult. More recently, it has been found necessary to place these societies in broader temporal and political contexts. Historical time has always presented problems in ethnographic description and analysis: the hazards of speculating about the past and the future have tended to confine anthropological accounts to synthetic images of the present. More precisely, anthropological study has a reputation for dealing with a present which is rapidly vanishing into the past, rather than one which is advancing into the future. Along with other threatened natural species, the subjects of anthropological enquiry have been popularised by the mass media as part of a 'Disappearing World', a nostalgic dream of ways of life which are being displaced by the advance of industrialism. 'What will you do', the layman enquires of the anthropologist, 'when all the tribes have died out?' At times, preserving anthropology seems as intractable a task as preserving threatened cultures. An interest in development implies an interest in the future, and that in turn implies, inescapably, judgments of moral value. An anthropology which professes a constructive interest in development must confront this difficulty but an anthropology which would eschew the future and development is morally bankrupt. Perhaps the majority of anthropologists would like to insist that they do have some interest in development, and that they do have a broader 'ideological' commitment perhaps some vague marxism or liberalism. However, any anthropologist who becomes practically involved in planned development is soon made aware (unless he is wholly without critical sensibility) of the discontinuities between theory and practice, between what he believes anthropology to be about, and the demands placed on him by involvement in plans, projects and programmes. A rhetorical commitment to reform is easy, and frequently heard. For example: 'As we have acquired powers of control over physical nature, it is now essential for us to acquire powers of control over man himself and over his development. And as the first was acquired by the application of strict methods of observation and deduction, so must the second be. Science will not be checked.' The 298

Anthropology and planned development author is Radcliffe-Brown (1980: 134), a founding father of modern anthropology, writing in 1930. He is not, however, an anthropologist with whom we would readily associate applied social science. Anthropology has always had its practitioners, but not many have managed to sustain a respectable bridge to the academic domain which is very much the discipline's centre of gravity (in a way which it is not for economics, for example). Anthropologists engaged in development work are usually designated 'consultants', suggesting that they are lending their expertise to planning; often it is plain that they are lending nothing more than their common sense. At worst these 'professionalises' of anthropology are regarded within the discipline as pariahs, but it is important to recognise that there are very few anthropologists in the current professorial cadre who have not acted as consultants, even if they do not care to advertise the fact in their CVs or bibliographies. There are many opportunities for senior scholars to supplement their incomes in this way, and feelings of guilt about 'moonlighting' may be compounded by fears that they are acting only as authoritative rubber stamps. We have discussed other abuses of anthropological advice in Chapter 2: the temptation to become involved in pseudo-prediction or using techniques of investigation as a substitute for political process. A more passive, but no more wholesome role is 'social pathology': the deployment of anthropologists to explain why a development project is dead or dying. At this stage the opportunity for remedy is usually long past, and the autopsy report filed by the anthropologist is an unwelcome reminder of failure rather than a constructive object lesson for the future. As we have argued, a more useful role can be applied only at much earlier stages in the life of a development project. This involves participation in decision-making, and places the anthropologist in the uncomfortable realm of politics. Those who are dependent on consultancy for a livelihood are obliged to behave very circumspectly, perhaps aiming to please their paymasters rather than the public. Others, more casually involved, may delight in playing the gadfly. Ian Hamnett (1973) describes an experience of this kind in Swaziland. As he understood it, the engineering firm which had commissioned his services wanted him to elucidate the attitudes, preconceptions and cultural constraints of subsistence cultivators, and their likely response to an irrigation project. For Hamnett, this was a 'lowly, scavenging, "parasitic" role', which also did little justice to the skills and political acumen of the people. Perhaps more to the point, Hamnett could see no justification for a proposed estate model of agriculture as against a more 'equitable' smallholding system with lower economic returns to investment. Making play on a speech on this theme by the Swazi King, Hamnett obliged the firm for which he was working to press the government for a clear definition of policy. Thus the 299

Conclusion decision was shifted from the technical to the political realm where it properly belonged. However correct this judgment may have been it surely owes more to common sense than to the application of social science. Professional consulting anthropologists would probably prefer to see themselves as mediators and facilitators, working with other professional colleagues but finding their niche somewhere between the interests of the planners and those of the people. As Hamnett has noted, there is strong pressure on anthropologists to deliver their advice in technical terms, and there is no doubt that many have recourse to sociological jargon to dress up opinions which have no firm 'scientific' footing. It seems that for the development agency the greatest practical value of an anthropologist is as a knowledgable mediator: today, young fieldworkers are hired for their knowledge of a place, a people and a language, and their capacity to interpret the interests of planners to a local population, and perhaps vice versa. It is notable that these fieldworkers are now as likely to be geographers, economists or historians as anthropologists. Development agencies rarely look to anthropology for theoretical insights, and the gap between theory and practice is widened by the tendency for academic anthropologists to assume that it is the business of others to find ways and means of applying the discipline. A grandiose version of this is the belief that anthropology has essentially educative functions, that it can help to produce 'well-tempered development officials', without becoming too directly implicated itself. Officials have an understandably pragmatic view of the utility of knowledge and are unlikely to go out of their way to discover and find uses for anthropological ideas. Glynn Cochrane pursues this point with vigour: 'Until anthropologists pay more attention to the needs, capacities, and specialities of other people on the development scene they will continue to have limited utility. The anthropology of development will never get anywhere on a part-time basis' (1971: 109). However, in inviting us to develop more practical interests Cochrane assumes that we will have to be prised away from our theoretical preoccupations: 'It is not really necessary to have a theory about the future, in order to do things now. Governments have functioned for a fairly long time without a social change theory that works. And this is better than having a theory that does not work. Yes, it is a worthwhile goal, but we live in the present!' (op. cit.: 111). A central purpose of this book has been to argue against such ad hoc views of planning, and the notion that the theoretical and practical facets of anthropology are separable. Given the difficulties which anthropologists have in confronting practical tasks, it is surprising how well disposed most planners and development officials are towards anthropology. However, it could be said that 300

Anthropology and planned development the engagement of anthropologists is in inverse proportion to the intensity of development efforts and the political strength of the state: it is very striking that while there were droves of anthropologists at work in prerevolutionary Ethiopia, the few who were involved in Malaysian projects were tightly controlled. To states with clearly determined views of progress and social structure (for example, China under Mao), anthropology or sociology tends to be an expensive irrelevance in planning. In the mixed economies, where anthropology is more at home, its counsel is often sought (v. Hanson 1966: 528), but it is far from easy to make sense of advice when it is delivered. Planners expect crisp, quantitative and qualitative statements, but are usually given rambling ethnography with a few comments about what they should not do. We have clearly failed to establish the terms in which we can usefully participate in development planning, and until we do it is reasonable for others to assume that our contribution should be roughly isomorphic with that of other specialists particularly the economists: generating data, elaborating strategies, making prognoses, packaging information for decision-makers, etc. There is no reason why anthropological involvement in planning should be either a reduplication of other interests in the development process, or simply a residuum of these interests. On the contrary, in this book we have tried to explain how an anthropological perspective encompasses the entire phenomenon of planned development, and from this it can be argued that our practical utility is in matters of extreme generality as well as in matters of social detail. More bluntly: an anthropological perspective raises some fundamental moral and philosophical questions which must be answered by anyone with a serious practical interest in planned development. Obviously they must be confronted in the first instance by anthropologists themselves. An initial task is demystification: finding more complete descriptions and analyses of development planning. This in itself will not render anthropology more applicable. The only way in which the vexatious gap between theory and practice may be closed is by restoring to anthropology some overtly moral concerns. There is nothing new about this suggestion; for example: 'One of my long-standing complaints about anthropology has been that although its business is to look at the empirical reality of what might be termed alternative cultures, it does not speculate about what might be' (Belshaw 1976: xiv). However outlandish such speculation might be, it could hardly be more inane than the ideal worlds of contemporary marxism and liberalism. Recognising the hazards of this task, Belshaw describes the 'applied anthropologist' as the 'sorcerer's apprentice': 'When we gaze into the crystal ball, we are involved in a kind of sorcery, a task for which the anthropologist is an apprentice, playing with forces that require much more work to be under301

Conclusion stood' (op. cit.: 14). Once again, the reference to magic is very telling; and once again we have to insist that the last thing anthropologists need is an apprenticeship in mystification. The utility of anthropology rests not in its scientific detachment from social values, but in its intimate and largely subjective understanding of them. Development planning is dominated by values - efficiency, equity, industrial growth - whose dogmatic narrowness is very poorly understood and very seldom challenged. And yet it is to these values which planners persistently refer when more elaborate ideologies and policies fail. Perhaps it is time to return to those fundamental dilemmas which have been the perennial starting-point for exploration of an ideal world: the persisting need to reconcile individual needs and social welfare, freedom and constraint, individualism and altruism. We need, as urgently as ever, a better understanding of human nature, not simply a commitment to dogma, and this is surely the proper concern of anthropologists. Our speculations will be saliently different from those of our predecessors, before the era in which Utopian thought became routinised and unfashionable: we no longer live in a world largely unexplored and unexploited; we have technical resources at our disposal which transform any previous reckoning of human potential, but we remain inescapably human; time no longer extends infinitely and steadily before us, transformations occur within rather than between generations. As the Manuels have remarked, the scale and the urgency of the human predicament surely warrant serious contemplation of our capacities and potentialities (1979: 811). We can only regret that radical and inventive explorations of human nature tend to be disdained; perhaps the recent history of 'sociobiology' is a case in point. Are there brutish aspects of our nature which we remain disinclined to discover? It would be pleasant to believe that one of the virtues of anthropology is its humane interest in social process - in growing up, marrying and dying, solving disputes and making a living. A concern for the human 'passions', which once animated social philosophy, has become lost in contemporary social science. The enduring influence of Fourier's Utopia rests on its earnest attempt to understand the basic character of mankind. There are many amusing touches (small boys with a passion for dirt are to be the scavengers for the Phalanstery), and there is an abundance of pseudo-science, but we must surely regret that the social fabric of a modern land settlement scheme has never been contemplated with the thoroughness which Fourier applied to his projects. Neither social science nor contemporary states take much interest in an emotion like love, which was for Fourier and other Utopians a prime cohesive force. Although we all know its potency on an intimate level, and may jocularly admit that it makes the world go round, we would find the suggestion that 302

Anthropology and planned development it has a place in planned development either risible or embarrassing. And yet, anthropologists know that in social process such 'passions' matter greatly, and are at the heart of human growth, production and reproduction. If projects - like the FLDA schemes in Malaysia - are constructed in ignorance or defiance of these processes, how can we expect them to succeed? Perhaps only the persistent experience of costly failure will open the way for a new, humane calculus for development. It seems safe to conclude that such a calculus will not be of the static, teleological kind which prevails today. Throughout this book we have dwelt on the intractability of time, and the fragility of our social constructions of it. In planned development there are powerful technical categories - goals, phases, sectors, etc. - which seek to confine and control an inherently elusive future. While admitting the necessity of some such categories we have insisted that none of them are absolute, and many of them are less than adequate for the demands which are made upon them. Most deal with short-term expediencies rather than longterm and continuous change. In speculating about development we must avoid the classic trap of the Utopian reformist: Dahrendorf has remarked that 'All Utopias from Plato's Republic to George Orwell's brave new world of 1984 have one element in common: they are all societies from which change is absent . . . the social fabric of Utopias does not, and perhaps cannot, recognise the unending flow of historical processes'. The ideal world is a 'perpetuum immobile' predicated on an assumption of consensus and stability (1971: 103-5). The power of this false premise is very plain in the case of communes like Olowo, and in many contemporary development projects. Dahrendorf proceeds to remark on the similarities between the timelessness of Utopia and the intellectual constructions of structural-functional anthropology: 'all processes . . . follow recurrent patterns and occur within, and as part of, the design as a whole. Not only do they not upset the status quo: they affirm and sustain it' (op. cit.: 106). The need to escape from this perpetuum immobile is now widely recognised by anthropologists, who strive to take account of history and of processes which transcend the small world of the ethnographer. However, our conceptions of time in society remain very naive and - for reasons we have already suggested - have little purchase on the future and on development. There is another area of ignorance which obstructs the more imaginative engagement of anthropology in the study and practice of planned development: in common with other branches of contemporary social science, our understanding of the modern nation state is exiguous. In a limited ethnographic context, anthropologists have had a good deal to say about the formation and structure of states, and yet we remain largely alienated from the modern states in which we live and work. Our interest 303

Conclusion in change is minimal and reformist, more because we have avoided any direct reckoning with the power of the state than because we are inherently bourgeois reactionaries - the extravagant claim of Gunder Frank (1975: 59). However, as we have argued, a narrow conception of development is pointless, and the conspectus which is necessary demands a critical interpretation of the modern state and the international arena of states. In certain circumstances this conspectus could transform the anthropologist from reformist to revolutionary, but it would be a grave delusion to imagine that the state itself will disappear, or even that its power over our daily lives will be significantly diminished in any future which we might currently imagine. A speculative social science cannot be so divorced from reality that its designs ignore or seek to disinvent this potent political force. Until we have a better understanding of the state, we have no coherent basis for recommending its transformation. Such a quest must proceed from the presumption that the state apparatus is not beyond the analytical capacities of social science, and that its structure and relations with society can indeed be laid bare. The state consists of people (often in surprisingly small numbers), institutions, symbolic systems, processes, networks of relationship - all phenomena with which anthropologists are familiar. As Belshaw has remarked 'social scientists have paid far too little attention to the ethnosocial science of public decision makers - to the task of revealing the conceptions that politicians, managers, and civil servants have about the nature of human interaction and the social structure and organization in which they work' (1976: 155). Anthropologists delight in telling each other that no behaviour is more exotic than our own, and that beyond our enthusiasm for faraway places and peoples is the challenge of explicating the world in which we ourselves live. If this is a serious anthropological interest, it is one we have gravely neglected. In this book we have drawn attention to the discontinuities in understanding and in political interest which separate officials from ordinary people, and which afflict the processes of national planning. It seems that the institutionalisation of planning has widened the gap: as the cadre of professionals, technicians and teachers expands relentlessly, critical attention is focussed not on generalities but on points of detail. A critical self-awareness is impaired by the fact that social scientists themselves are deeply involved in devising and implementing plans: those who are best placed to observe and analyse are inhibited by their own engagement in the processes of development. If we wish to improve our understanding, it seems that social scientists themselves will have to come under scrutiny, along with the civil servants, politicians and other development personnel. 304

Anthropology and planned development It is plain that today the process of discovery, and the flow of information, are decidedly unilateral. It may seem outrageous that in the pursuit of planned development ordinary people have been subjected to persistent invasions of their privacy by people who describe themselves as social scientists, justify their intrusions in the name of progress, and wear the mantle of civil authority; while any reciprocal scrutiny of officialdom, of central planning offices and policy-making bodies is sternly resisted by the power and privilege of the state. Knowledge, like power, has a centripetal motion; knowledge which is both powerful and uncertain, as is the case with planning, must be guarded with great care. As we have seen, planners are obliged to display a great deal of confidence and technical competence about processes whose outcomes are indeterminable. We may suspect that too much public knowledge of the mysteries of development planning would deprive it of much of its political instrumentality. However, it is now evident that the costs of such obscurantism, witting or unwitting, are too great. A fuller understanding of planning would help to make it evident that trying to manipulate resources and people in a capricious future is a process that is quite reasonably subject to misjudgment and failure. It is unfortunate that, while planning generates most of its own problems, explanations and remedies have generally been pursued outside the central structures and processes of the state. In the 1970s an earlier notion that it was the intractable conservatism of 'the people' which stood in the way of development was replaced with a populist notion which may prove to be no less absurd: 'the people' are believed to have authentic remedies for the ills of planning, and should therefore be given much greater responsibility for the design of projects and programmes as well as their implementation. The notion that 'the people' have a better understanding of planned development, how it is done and how it should be done, than do the planners, is patently false and tantamount to an admission of failure. Our complaint in this book has been that nobody has an adequate understanding of planned development. The only basis for coherent and constructive popular participation in planning is a more exact and demystified understanding of what it is and how it is done. Only then will 'the people' be able to influence reform and the organisation of their collective future. As we have explained, the hazard for the state of this populist ideal is that such public enlightenment may inspire revolution before it inspires an enthusiasm for reform. Nevertheless, we would insist that this broader task of explication is a proper one for anthropologists. An onerous task, dear to the heart of an earlier generation of anthropologists which included Malinowski, has been to explain mankind to mankind. An anthropology which is intent on 305

Conclusion making some people (Amazonian Indians, slumdwellers) more intelligible to some others (government officials, an academic coterie) is corrupt. To understand planning and to share its normative concerns will doubtless be uncomfortable, both for ourselves and for the objects of our investigations. But as Raymond Firth has recently observed (1981), a useful anthropology cannot expect to be comfortable. The age-old dilemma of how we can live profitably and peaceably with one another is much closer to the heart of anthropology than we may sometimes recognise. If these disciplinary resources are developed there is a chance that anthropology may ultimately prove its worth by helping to explain a confused and lethally divided world to itself, and to indicate humane and realistic prospects for progress.

306

Bibliography

A: Introduction, and Chapters 1 and 2 Adams, M.E. 1980 Review of Tony Barnett, The Gezira Scheme: an illusion of development. Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol 28 no 3, pp 633-6. Adler, J.H. 1973 The World Bank's concept of development - an in-house Dogmengeschichte. In J. Bhagwati & R.S. Eckaus, Development and planning. London, pp 30-50. Akhter Hameed Khan 1971 Tour of twenty Thanas. Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development. Comilla. Alavi, H. 1972 The state in post-colonial societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh. New Left Review no 74. Amin, S. 1974 Modern migrations in Western Africa. London. 1976 Unequal development. Brighton. Apter, D.E. 1963 Political religion in the new states. In C. Geertz, Old societies and new states. New York, pp 57-104. 1968 Some conceptual approaches to the study of modernization. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Apthorpe, R. (ed.) 1970 People planning and development studies. London. Arndt, H.W. 1972 Development economics before 1945. In J. Bhagwati & R.S. Eckaus, Development and planning. London, pp 13-29. Asad, T. 1973 Anthropology and the colonial encounter. London. Bailey, F.G. 1971 The peasant view of the bad life. In T. Shanin, Peasants and peasant societies. Harmondsworth, pp 299-321. Bailey, M. 1979 Chinese aid in action: building the Tanzania-Zambia railway. In N. Maxwell, China's road to development. Oxford, pp 289-97. Baran, P. 1957 The political economy of growth. New York. Barnett, T. 1975 The Gezira scheme: the production of cotton and the reproduction of underdevelopment. In I. Oxaal, T. Barnett & D. Booth (eds.) Beyond the sociology of development. London, pp 183-207. 1977 The Gezira scheme: An illusion of development. London. Bastide, R. 1973 Applied anthropology. London. Bauer, P.T. 1976 Dissent on development. London. Bell, C.L.G. 1974 The political framework. In H. Chenery et al., Redistribution with growth. London, pp 52-72. Belshaw, C.S. 1976 The sorcerer's apprentice: An anthropology of public policy. Oxford. Bengal Secretariat 1913 Bengal famine code. Calcutta. Bennis, W.G., Benne, K.D., Chin, R. & Corey, K.E. (eds.) 1976 The planning of change. New York. 307

Bibliography Berger, R. 1979 Economic planning in China. In N. Maxwell, China's road to development. Oxford, pp 169-203. Bernstein, H. 1979 Sociology of underdevelopment vs. sociology of development? In D. Lehmann, Development theory: four critical studies. London, pp 77-106. Beteille, A. 1978 Ideologies: commitment and partisanship. L'Homme, vol 43 nos 3/4, pp 47-67. Bowles, R.A. & Whynes, D.K. 1979 Macroeconomic planning. London. Brandt, W. 1980 North-South: A programme for survival. London. Bray, F.A. & Robertson, A.F. 1980 Sharecropping in Kelantan, Malaysia. In G. Dalton, Research in economic anthropology, vol 3, Greenwich, Conn., pp 209-44. Briggs, J. 1980 The role of the expert in development planning: a study of conflict between planners and peasants in the Sudan. In J.C. Stone, Experts in Africa. Aberdeen, pp 103-12. Budd, A. 1978 The politics of economic planning. Glasgow. Bukharin, N. & Preobrazhensky, E. 1966 The ABC of communism: A popular explanation of the program of the Communist Party of Russia. Ann Arbor. Bushra, A. & Sidgi, M.H. (n.d.) The Gezira: an illusion of development: a review. Faculty of Economics, University of Khartoum. Caiden, N. & Wildavsky, A. 1974 Planning and budgeting in poor countries. London. CDP Interproject Editorial Team 1977 Gilding the ghetto: the state and the poverty experiments. London. Chambers, R. 1980 Cognitive problems of experts in rural Africa. In J.C. Stone, Experts in Africa. Aberdeen, pp 96-102. Changli, I.I. 1978 Methodological aspects of the theory of management of social progress. In Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Planning and forecasting social processes. Praha, pp 61-72. Chenery, H., Ahluwalia, M.S., Bell, C.L.G., Duloy, J.H. & Jolly, R. 1974 Redistribution with growth. London. Cheung, S.N.S. 1982 Will China go 'capitalist'? An economic analysis of property rights and institutional change. Institute of Economic Affairs, Hobart Paper 94. London. Cohen, J.M. 1974 Rural change in Ethiopia: the Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit. Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol 22, no 4, pp 580-614. Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences 1978 Planning and forecasting social processes. Praha. Dernberger, R.F. & Le Gall, F. 1980 Is the Chinese model transferable? In R.F. Dernberger (ed.) China's development experience in comparative perspective. Cambridge, Massachusetts, pp 306-37. Deutsch, K.W. 1963 The nerves of government: Models of political communication and control. New York. Dobb, M. 1966 Soviet economic development since 1917. London. Dobyns, H.F., Doughty, P.L. & Lasswell, H.D. 1964 Peasants, power and applied social change: Vicos as a model. London. DOE - Department of the Environment (UK) 1969 People and planning. Report of the committee on public participation in planning. London. Dore, R. 1973 British factory - Japanese factory: The origins of national diversity in industrial relations. London. 308

Introduction, Chapters 1 and 2 1976 The diploma disease. London. Duloy, J.H. 1974 Sectoral, regional and project analysis. In H. Chenery et al., Redistribution with growth. London, pp 195-208. Dumont, R. 1968 False start in Africa. London. Dunn, J. 1979 Western political theory in the face of the future. Cambridge. Eisenstadt, S.N. 1966 Modernization: protest and change. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Ellman, M. 1979 Socialist planning. Cambridge. Epstein, T.S. 1962 Economic development and social change in South India. Manchester. Erasmus, C. J. 1961 Man takes control: Cultural development and American aid. Minneapolis. Everts, A. 1980 Development planning in Niger: techniques of regional analysis. In G. Dalton, Research in economic anthropology, vol 3, Greenwich, Conn., pp 245-64. Faaland, J. &Parkinson, J.R. 1976 Bangladesh: The test case of development. London. Faber, M. & Seers, D. 1972 The crisis in planning. Vol 1 - The issues; vol 2 - The experience. London. Fanon, F. 1967 The wretched of the earth. Harmondsworth. Ferge, Z. 1978 Some problems of planning social processes. In Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Planning and forecasting social processes. Praha, pp 73-9. Flood, G. 1975 Nomadism and its future: the 'Afar. Royal Anthropological Institute News, no 6, pp 5-9. Foster, G.M. 1962 Traditional cultures and the impact of technological change. New York. Foster-Carter, A. 1974 Neo-Marxist approaches to development and underdevelopment. In E. De Kadt & G. Williams, Sociology and development. London, pp 67-105. Frank, A.G. 1969 Latin America: underdevelopment or revolution. New York. 1971 Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. Harmondsworth. Gaitskell, A. 1959 Gezira: A story of development in the Sudan. London. Geertz, C. 1963Agricultural involution: The process of ecological change in Indonesia. Berkeley. 1964 Ideology as a cultural system. In D.E. Apter, Ideology and discontent. New York, pp 47-76. Gellner, E. 1964 Thought and change. London. 1978 Notes towards a theory of ideology. L'Homme, vol 43, nos 3/4, pp 69-82. Ghai, D. 1972 The machinery of planning in Kenya. In M. Faber and D. Seers, The crisis in planning. London, vol 2, pp 120-33. Ginsberg, M. 1979 L.T. Hobhouse. In T. Raison & P. Barker, The founding fathers of social science. London, pp 195-203. Girling, J.L.S. 1980 America and the Third World: Revolution and intervention. London. Goode, W.J. 1963 World revolution and family patterns. New York. Griffin, K.B. & Enos, J.L. 1970 Planning development. London. Guyana NSPC - National Service Publishing Centre 1975 A supplement to the Declaration of Sophia (Exercises and Activities). Georgetown. Hanson, A.H. 1966 The process of planning: a study of India's five-year plans 1950-1964. London. 309

Bibliography 1968 Power shifts and regional balances. In P. Streeten & M. Lipton, The crisis in Indian planning: Economic planning in the 1960s. London, pp 19-60. Helleiner, G.K. 1966 Peasant agriculture, government, and economic growth in Nigeria. Home wood, 111. Herskovits, M. J. 1952 The problem of adapting old societies to new tasks. In B.F. Hoselitz, The progress of the underdeveloped areas. Chicago, pp 89-112. Hill, P. 1963 The migrant cocoa farmers of Southern Ghana: A study in rural capitalism. Cambridge. Hirschman, A.O. 1961 Ideologies of economic development in Latin America. In A.O. Hirschmann, Latin American issues: essays and comments. New York, pp 3-42. 1967 Development projects observed. Washington. Holmberg, A.R. 1971 Vicos: a peasant hacienda community in Peru. In G. Dalton, Economic development and social change. New York, pp 518-55. Hoselitz, B.F. 1963 Main concepts in the analysis of the social implications of technical change. In B.F. Hoselitz & W. Moore, Industrialization and society. The Hague, pp 11-31. Howard, R. 1978 Colonialism and underdevelopment in Ghana. London. Huntington, S.P. 1968 Political order in changing societies. New Haven. Hyden, G. 1980 Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an uncaptured peasantry. London. IBRD - International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1955 The economic development of Malaya. Baltimore. 1975 Kenya: into the second decade. Baltimore. 1980 World development report 1980. London. Inkeles, A. 1966 The modernization of man. In M. Weiner, Modernization: The dynamics of growth. New York. Inkeles, A. & Smith, D.H. 1964 Becoming modern: Individual change in six developing countries. Cambridge, Mass. ISSRC - International Social Science Research Council 1958 Social, economic and technological change: A theoretical approach. Paris. Kaser, M. 1965 Comecon: Integration problems in the planned economies. London. Kerr, C , Dunlop, J.R., Harbison, F. & Myers, C.A. 1973 Industrialism and industrial man: The problems of labour and management in economic growth. Harmondsworth. Kindleberger, C.P. 1967 French planning. In M.F. Millikan, National economic planning. New York, pp 278-303. Kingdom of Lesotho 1981a Third Five Year Development Plan, 1980/1-1984/5. Central Planning and Development Office, Maseru. 1981b Agricultural development: A blueprint for action. Ministry of Agriculture, Maseru. Kitching, G. 1982 Development and underdevelopment in historical perspective: Populism, nationalism and industrialization. London. Kornai, J. 1979 Appraisal of project appraisal. In M.J. Boskin (ed.), Economics and human welfare. London, pp 75-99. Kuper, A. 1973 Anthropologists and anthropology: The British school 1922-72. London. Kutta, F. 1978 The system of planned management of social processes, social planning and forecasting. In Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Planning and forecasting social processes. Praha, pp 45-60. 310

Introduction, Chapters 1 and 2 Laclau, E. 1977 Politics and ideology in Marxist theory: Capitalism - Facism Populism. London. Leach, E.R. 1976 Culture and communication: The logic by which symbols are connected. Cambridge. Lehmann, D. 1977 Neo-classical populism. Peasant Studies, vol 6, no 4, pp 131-6. Levy, M. J. 1966 Modernization and the structure of societies: A setting for international affairs. Princeton, N.J. Lewis, O. 1964 The children of Sanchez: Autobiography of a Mexican family. Harmondsworth. Lewis, W.A. 1959 On assessing a development plan. Economic Bulletin for Ghana, vol 3, nos 6/7. 1966 Development planning: The essentials of economic policy. London. Leys, C. 1969 The analysis of planning. In C. Leys, Politics and change in developing countries. Cambridge, pp 247-75. 1972 A new conception of planning? In M. Faber & D. Seers, The crisis in planning. London, vol 1, pp 56-76. Lindblom, C.E. 1965 The intelligence of democracy. New York. Lipton, M. 1971 Financing economic development. In D. Seers & L. Joy, Development in a divided world. Harmondsworth, pp 231-69. 1977 Why poor people stay poor: Urban bias in world development. London. Little, I.M.D. & Mirrlees, J.A. 1974 Project appraisal and planning for developing countries. London. Little, I.M.D. & Scott, M.F.G. 1976 Using shadow prices. London. Lloyd, P.C. 1966 The new elites of tropical Africa. London. Long, N. 1977 An introduction to the sociology of rural development. London. Malinowski, B. 1954 Magic, science and religion and other essays. New York. Mannheim, K. 1936 Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge. London. Manuel, F.E. & Manuel F.P. 1979 Utopian thought in the Western world. Oxford. Maro, P.S. & Mlay, W.F.I. 1979 Decentralization and the organization of space in Tanzania. Africa, vol 49, no 3, pp 291-301. Marshall, T.H. 1975 Social policy in the twentieth century. London. Mayer, R., Moroney, R. & Morris, R. 1974 Centrally planned change. Urbana, 111. Meier, R.L. 1965 Developmental planning. New York. Meillassoux, C. 1964 Anthropologie economique des Gouro de Cote DTvoire. Paris. Meynaud, J. 1964 Technocracy. London. Miliband, R. 1969 The state in capitalist society: The analysis of the Western system of power. New York. Minhas, B.S. 1972 Objectives and policy frame of the fourth Indian Plan. In M. Faber & D. Seers, The crisis in planning. London, vol 2, pp 21-54. Moore, B. 1967 Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. Harmondsworth. Morgan, A.E. 1946 Nowhere was somewhere: How history makes Utopias and how Utopias make history. Chapel Hill, N.C. Myrdal, G. 1968 Asian drama: An enquiry into the poverty of nations. Harmondsworth. Nath, S.K. 1971 The theory of balanced growth. In I. Livingstone, Economic policy for development. Harmondsworth. 311

Bibliography Nekby, B. 1971 CADU - an Ethiopian experiment in developing peasant farming. Stockholm. Nellis, J.R. 1970 A model of development ideology in Africa. Beverly Hills. Nettl, J.P. 1969 Strategies in the study of political development. In C. Leys, Politics and change in developing countries. Cambridge, pp 13-34. Niculescu, B. 1958 Colonial planning: A comparative study. London. Nordberg, O., Phillips, P. & Sterky, G. 1975 Action for children: Towards an optimum child care package in Africa. Uppsala. Nove, A. 1969 Soviet political organization and development. In C. Leys, Politics and change in developing countries. Cambridge, pp 65-84. Nyerere, J.K. 1973 Freedom and development: A selection from writings and speeches 1968-1973. Dar-es-Salaam. Oliver, T.W. 1978 The United Nations in Bangladesh. Princeton, N. J. Opie, R. 1972 Planning in the UK. In M. Faber & D. Seers, The crisis in planning. London, vol 2, pp. 208-16. Packenham, R. A. 1973 Liberal America and the Third World: Political development ideas in foreign aid and social science. Princeton, N.J. Palmer, I. 1977 The new rice in Indonesia. Geneva. Papanek, G. 1972 Foreign advisers and planning agencies. In M. Faber & D. Seers, The crisis in planning. London, vol 1, pp 172-83. Parkin, D. 1975 The rhetoric of responsibility: Bureaucratic communications in a Kenya farming area. In M. Bloch, Political language and oratory in traditional society. London, pp 113-39. Perkins, D.H. (ed.) 1975 China's economy in historical perspective. Stanford. Plaksin, S. (n.d.) Principles of equality: International economic relations of the socialist countries. Moscow. Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1980 Applied anthropology. In G. Dalton, Research in economic anthropology, vol 2, Greenwich, Conn., pp 123-34. Raper, A.F. 1970 Rural development in action: The comprehensive experiment at Comilla, East Pakistan. Ithaca. Redfield, R. 1960 Peasant society and culture. Chicago. Ribeiro, J.P. & Wharton, C.R. 1970 The ACAR programme in Minas Gerais, Brazil. In C.R. Wharton, Subsistence agriculture and economic development. London, pp 424—38. Robbins, L. 1937 Economic planning and international order. London. Rogers, E.M. 1970 Motivations, values and attitudes of subsistence farmers: towards a subculture of peasantry. In C.R. Wharton, Subsistence agriculture and economic development. London, pp 111-35. Rostow, W. W. 1960a The process of economic growth. London. 1960b The stages of economic growth: A non-communist manifesto. Cambridge. 1971 Politics and the stages of growth. Cambridge. Rudolph, L.L & Rudolph, S.H. 1967 The modernity of tradition: Political development in India. Chicago. Sachs, I. 1976 The discovery of the Third World. Cambridge, Mass. Scott, J.C. 1968 Political ideology in Malaysia: Reality and the beliefs of an elite. New Haven. Selznick, P. 1949 TV A and the grass roots: A study in the sociology of formal organization. Berkeley. Skocpol, T. 1979 States and social revolutions: A comparative analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge. 312

Introduction, Chapters 1 and 2 Smelser, N.J. 1963 Mechanisms of change and adjustment to change. In B.F. Hoselitz & W. Moore, Industrialization and society. The Hague, pp 32-54. Stolper, W. 1966 Planning without facts: Lessons in resource allocation from Nigeria's development. Cambridge, Mass. Streeten, P. 1971 Economic strategies. In D. Seers & L. Joy, Development in a divided world. Harmondsworth, pp 141-50. Streeten, P. & Hill, R. 1968 Aid to India. In P. Streeten & M. Lipton, The crisis of Indian planning: Economic planning in the 1960s. London, pp 323^9. Streeten, P. & Lipton, M. 1968 The crisis of Indian planning: Economic planning in the 1960s. London. Streeten, P., with Burki, S. J., Haq, M., Hicks, N. & Stewart, F. 1981 First things first: Meeting basic human needs in developing countries. New York. Stutley, P.W. 1980 Some aspects of the contemporary scene. In J.C. Stone, Experts in Africa. Aberdeen, pp 76-95. Tanganyika 1962 Development plan for Tanganyika 1961/62-1963/64. Dar-esSalaam. Thornton, T.P. (ed.) 1964 The Third World in Soviet perspective. Studies by Soviet writers on the developing areas. Princeton. Tinbergen, J. 1964 Central planning. New Haven. 1967 Development planning. London. Topping, P. & Smith, G. 1977 Government against poverty? Liverpool Community Development Project. Oxford. Toschenko, Z.T. 1978 The development of economic and social planning in the Soviet Union. In Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Planning and forecasting social processes. Praha, pp 17-23. United Nations 1979 Everyone's United Nations. New York. United Republic of Tanzania 1969 Tanzania Second five-year Plan for Economic and Social Development 1st July, 1969-30th June 1974. Dar-es-Salaam. USAID - United States Agency for International Development (n.d. - c. 1980) The Agency for International Development: an overview. Washington. 1981 Congressional presentation, fiscal year 1982. Washington. Van Arkadie, B. 1972 Planning in Tanzania. In M. Faber & D. Seers, The crisis in planning. London, vol 2, pp 89-114. 1979 The scope of planning in developing countries: some notes. Development and Change, vol 10, pp 567-75. VOLAG (ed. W.T. Thomas) 1976 VOLAG Directory. Dacca. Warren, B. 1980 Imperialism: pioneer of capitalism. London. Waterston, A. 1965 Development planning: Lessons from experience. Baltimore. 1972 An operational approach to development planning. In M. Faber & D. Seers, The crisis in planning. London, vol 1, pp 81-104. Weber, M. 1930 The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. London. Westcott,N.J. 1981 The politics of planning and the planning of politics: colonialism and development in British Africa, 1930-1960. Mimeo: Development Studies Association. White, J. 1974 The politics of foreign aid. London. Williams, E. 1972 The purpose of planning. In M. Faber & D. Seers, The crisis in planning. London, vol 1, pp 39-48. Wolf, E.R. 1971 Peasant wars of the twentieth century. London. Worsley, P. 1967 The Third World. London.

313

Bibliography B: Chapter 3

Apter, D.E. 1963 Ghana in transition. New York. Badruddin, A. 1972 Manual on Comilla co-operatives. Comilla. Bailey, F.G. 1965 Decisions by consensus in councils and committees. In M.P. Banton, Political systems and the distribution of power. London, pp 1-20. 1969 Stratagems and spoils: A social anthropology of politics. Oxford. 1971 The peasant view of the bad life. In T. Shanin, Peasants and peasant societies. Harmondsworth, pp 299-321. Barrett, S.R. 1977 The rise and fall of an African Utopia: A wealthy theocracy in comparative perspective. Waterloo, Ont. Baviskar, B.S. 1971 Cooperatives and caste in Maharashtra: a case study. In P. Worsley, Two blades of grass. Manchester, pp 275-92. Beaglehole, J.H. 1976 The district: A study of decentralization in West Malaysia. London. Bennett, J.W. 1975 The Hutterian colony: a traditional voluntary agrarian commune with large economic scale. In P. Dorner, Cooperative and commune: group farming in the economic development of agriculture. Madison, pp 65-88. Bernstein, B. 1967 Elaborated and restricted codes: an outline. In S. Lieberson, Explorations in sociolinguistics. International Journal of American Linguistics, vol 33, no 4, pp 126-33. Bukharin, N. & Preobrazhensky, E. 1966 The ABC of communism: A popular explanation of the program of the Communist Party of Russia. Ann Arbor. Campbell, W.K.H. 1951 Practical co-operation in Asia and Africa. Cambridge. Cohen, R. 1972 The kibbutz settlement: Principles and processes. Tel Aviv. Dodds, T. 1972 Multi-media approaches to rural education. Cambridge. Dore, R.F. 1971 Modern cooperatives in traditional communities. In P. Worsley, Two blades of grass. Manchester, pp 43-60. Dore, R. & Mars, Z. (eds.) 1981 Community development - comparative studies in India, The Republic of Korea, Mexico and Tanzania. London. Dorner, P. 1975 Cooperative and commune: Group farming in the economic development of agriculture. Madison. Downs, A. 1967 Inside bureaucracy. Boston. Dube, S.C. 1958 India's changing villages: Human factors in community development. London. Dunn, J. 1979 Western political theory in the face of the future. Cambridge. Dunn, J. & Robertson, A.F. 1973 Dependence and opportunity: Political change in Ahafo. Cambridge. Elliott, P. & Golding, P. 1974 Mass communication and social change: The imagery of development and the development of imagery. In E. De Kadt & G. Williams, Sociology and development. London, pp 229-54. Ellman, A. 1975 Group farming experiences in Tanzania. In P. Dorner, Cooperative and commune: group farming in the economic development of agriculture. Madison, pp 239-75. Ellman, M. 1979 Socialist planning. Cambridge. Emmett, B.P. 1972 The television and radio audience in Britain. In D. McQuail, Sociology of mass communications. Harmondsworth, pp 195-219. Enzensberger, H.M. 1970 Constituents of a theory of the media. New Left Review, vol 64, pp 13-36. 314

Chapter 3 Forde, D.C. 1949 Habitat, economy and society: A geographical introduction to ethnology. London. Fortes, M. 1958 Introduction. In J. Goody (ed.), The development cycle in domestic groups. Cambridge, pp 1-14. Frankenberg, R. 1966 Communities in Britain: Social life in town and country. Harmondsworth. Freire, P. 1972 Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth. Galeski, B. 1971 Types of collective farm in Poland. In P. Worsley, Two blades of grass. Manchester, pp 253-61. 1975 The models of collective farming. In P. Dorner, Cooperative and commune: group farming in the economic development of agriculture. Madison, pp 17-42. Gellner, E. 1964 Thought and change. London. Glasgow University Media Group 1980 Bad news. London. Goody, J. 1968 Literacy in traditional societies. Cambridge. Goody, J. & Watt, I. 1968 The consequences of literacy. In J. Goody, Literacy in traditional societies. Cambridge, pp 27-68. Gray, J. 1974 Mao Tse-Tung's strategy for the collectivisation of Chinese agriculture: an important phase in the development of Maoism. In E. De Kadt & G. Williams, Sociology and development. London, pp 39-65. Gurley, J.G. 1979 Rural development in China 1949-75, and the lessons to be learned from it. In N. Maxwell, China's road to development. Oxford, pp 5-25. Gusfield, J.R. 1975 Community: A critical response. Oxford. Hanson, A.H. 1966 The process of planning: A study of India's five-year plans 1950-1964. London. Harriss, John 1977 The limitations of HYV technology in North Arcot district: the view from the village. In B.H. Farmer, Green revolution? London, pp 124-42. Holyoake, G.J. 1908 The history of co-operation. London. Hyman, H.H., Levine, G.N. & Wright, C.R. 1967 Inducing social change in developing communities: An international survey of expert advice. Geneva. Illich, I.D. 1971 Deschooling society. London. Kingdom of Lesotho 1981b Agricultural development: A blueprint for action. Ministry of Agriculture, Maseru. Kirk-Greene, A.H.M. 1981 'Stay by your radios': Documentation for a study of military government in tropical Africa. Leiden. Lerner, D. 1958 The passing of traditional society: Modernizing the Middle East. Glencoe, 111. Lewin, M. 1980 The kolkhoz and the Russian muzhik. In E.J. Hobsbawm et al. (eds.), Peasants in history. Calcutta, pp 55-68. Lipton, M. 1977 Why poor people stay poor: Urban bias in world development. London. Maddick, H. 1970 Panchayati Raj: A study of rural local government in India. London. Mahmood, A. 1964 Basic democracies: Law and principles of local government in Pakistan. Lahore. Mann, P.H. 1965 An approach to urban sociology. London. Mathur, J.C. & Neurath, P. 1959 An Indian experiment in farm radio clubs. Paris. McLuhan, M. 1964 Understanding media: The extensions of man. London. 315

Bibliography Moore, B. 1967 Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. Harmondsworth. Morley, J. 1975 British agricultural cooperatives. London. Mumford, L. 1946 Technics and civilization. London. Nove, A. 1969 Soviet political organization and development. In C. Leys, Politics and change in developing countries. Cambridge, pp 65-84. Nyerere, J.K. 1967 Education for self-reliance. In Freedom and socialism: A selection from writings and speeches 1965-67. London, pp 267-90. O'Brien, D.B.C. 1975 Bureaucrats and co-operators: The organisation of a peanut economy. In D.B.C. O'Brien, Saints and politicians: Essays in the organisation of a Senegalese peasant society. Cambridge, pp 115-45. OXFAM 1980 Field Directors' handbook. Oxford. Pelzel, J.C. 1972 Economic management of a production brigade in post-Leap China. In W.E. Willmott, Economic organization in Chinese society. Stanford, pp 387^14. Pocock, D.F. 1960 Sociologies: urban and rural. In L. Dumont & D. Pocock, Contributions to Indian sociology, no 4, pp 63-81. Raup, P.M. 1975 French experience with group farming: the GAEC. In P. Dorner, Cooperative and commune: group farming in the economic development of agriculture. Madison, pp 327-45. Redfield, R. 1953 The primitive world and its transformations. Cornell. Rex, J. 1961 Key problems in sociological theory. London. Riggs, F.W. 1964 Administration in developing countries: The theory of the prismatic society. Boston. Righter, R. 1978 Whose news? Politics, the press and the Third World. London. Robertson, A.F. 1971 The development of town committees in Ahafo, western Ghana. In A.I. Richards & A. Kuper, Councils in action. Cambridge, pp 130-70. 1976 Rules, strategies and the development committee. Community Development Journal, vol 11, no 3, pp 185-91. 1978 Community of strangers: A journal of discovery in Uganda. London. Rogers, E.M. 1969 Modernization among peasants: The impact of communication. New York. Roider, W. 1971 Farm settlements for socio-economic development: The West Nigerian case. Miinchen. Schaffer, B. 1973 The administrative factor: Papers in organization, politics and development. London. 1974 Administrative training and development: A comparative study of east Africa, Zambia, Pakistan and India. New York. Scott, J.C. 1976 The moral economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven, Conn. Selznick, P. 1949 TVA and the grass roots: A study in the sociology of formal organization. Berkeley. Shillinglaw, G. 1971 Traditional rural cooperation and social structure: the communist Chinese collectivisation of agriculture. In P. Worsley, Two blades of grass. Manchester, pp 137-57. Spiro, M.E. 1968 Is the family universal? In P. Bohannan & J. Middleton, Marriage, family and residence. New York, pp 221-35. Staniland, M. 1971 Colonial government and populist reform: The case of the Ivory Coast. Journal of Administration Overseas, vol 10, nos 1 & 2, pp 33-42, and pp 113-26. 316

Chapters 4 and 6 USAID - United States Agency for International Development 1981 Congressional presentation, fiscal year 1982. Washington. Wadekin, K.-E. 1975 The soviet Kolkhoz: vehicle of cooperative farming or of control and transfer of resources? In P. Dorner, Cooperative and commune: Group farming in the economic development of agriculture. Madison, pp 95-116. Weber, M. 1947 The theory of social and economic organisation. New York. Weintraub, D. 1971 Rural cooperation, local government and social structure: a comparative study of village organization in different types of community in Israel. In P. Worsley, Two blades of grass. Manchester, pp 83-136. Wertheim, W.F. & Steifel, M. 1982 Production, equality and participation in rural China. Geneva. Whyte, W.H. 1960 The organization man. Harmondsworth. Wiles, P. 1969 A syndrome, not a doctrine: some elementary theses on populism. In G. Ionescu & E. Gellner, Populism: Its meanings and national characteristics. London, pp 166-79. Wilkie, R. 1971 San Miguel: A Mexican collective ejido. Stanford. Wilson, P. J. 1967 A Malay village and Malaysia: Social values and rural development. New Haven, Conn. Worsley, P. 1969 The concept of populism. In G. Ionescu & E. Gellner, Populism: Its meanings and national characteristics. London. 1971 Two blades of grass: Rural cooperatives in agricultural modernization. Manchester. C: Chapter 4 and Chapter 6

Abrams, P. & McCulloch, A. 1976 Communes, sociology and society. Cambridge. Adams, A. 1979 An open letter to a young researcher. African Affairs, vol 78, no 313, pp 451-79. Armytage, W.H.G. 1961 Heavens below: Utopian experiments in England, 1560-1960. London. Banton, M.P. 1957 West African city: A study of tribal life in Freetown. London. Barrett, S.R. 1977 The rise and fall of an African Utopia: A wealthy theocracy in comparative perspective. Waterloo, Ont. Bastide, R. 1966 Messianism and social and economic development. In I. Wallerstein, Social change: The colonial situation. New York, pp 467-77. Bellamy, E. 1967 Looking backward 2000-1887. Cambridge, Mass. Belshaw, C.S. 1954 Changing Melanesia: Social economics of culture contact. Melbourne. 1976 The sorcerer's apprentice: An anthropology of public policy. Oxford. Bennett, J.W. 1967 Hutterian brethren. Stanford. 1975 The Hutterian colony: a traditional voluntary agrarian commune with large economic scale. In P. Dorner, Cooperative and commune: Group farming in the economic development of agriculture. Madison, pp 65-88. Berger, P.L. 1977 Pyramids of sacrifice: Political ethics and social change. Harmondsworth. Bloch-Laine, F. 1965 The utility of Utopias for reformers. Daedalus, vol 94, no 2, pp 419-36. Brinton, C. 1965 Utopia and democracy, Daedalus, vol 94, no 2, pp 348-66. Bromley, R. 1979 The urban informal sector: Critical perspectives on employment and housing policies. London. 317

Bibliography Bukharin, N. & Preobrazhensky, E. 1966 The ABC of communism: A popular explanation of the program of the Communist Party of Russia. Ann Arbor. Burridge, K. 1969 New heaven, new earth: A study of millenarian activities. Oxford. Campbell, W.K.H. 1951 Practical co-operation in Asia and Africa. Cambridge. Clastres, P. 1977 Society against the state. Oxford. Cochrane, G. 1971 Development anthropology. New York. Cohn, N. 1957 The pursuit of the millennium. London. Dahrendorf, R. 1971 Out of Utopia: toward a reorientation of sociological analysis. In G. Kateb, Utopia. New York, pp 103-26. Dube, S.C. 1958 India's changing villages: Human factors in community development. London. Dunn, J. 1972 Modern revolutions: An introduction to the analysis of a political phenomenon. Cambridge. 1979 Western political theory in the face of the future. Cambridge. Dunn, J. & Robertson, A.F. 1973 Dependence and opportunity: Political change in Ahafo. Cambridge. Engels, F. 1958 Socialism: Utopian and scientific. In K. Marx & F. Engels, Selected works, vol 1. Moscow, pp 93-155. Epstein, T.S. 1962 Economic development and social change in South India. Manchester. Ferge, Z. 1978 Some problems of planning social processes. In Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, Planning and forecasting social processes. Praha, pp 73-9. Finley, M.I. 1975 Utopianism ancient and modern. In M.I. Finley, The use and abuse of history. London, pp 178-92. Firth, R. 1981 Engagement and detachment: reflections on applying social anthropology to social affairs. Human Organization, vol 40, no 3, pp 193-201. Flood, G. 1975a Nomadism and its future: the 'Afar. Royal Anthropological Institute News, no 6, pp 5-9. 1975b Development in Ethiopia. Royal Anthropological Institute News, no 9, pp 18-19. Fortes, M. 1958 Introduction. In J. Goody (ed.), The development cycle in domestic groups. Cambridge, pp 1-14. Frank, A.G. 1975 Anthropology = ideology: applied anthropology = politics. Race and Class, vol 17, no 1, pp 57-68. Geertz, C. 1964 ideology as a cultural system. In D.E. Apter, Ideology and discontent. New York, pp 47-76. 1966 The rotating credit association: a 'middle rung' in development. In I. Wallerstein, Social change: The colonial situation. New York, pp 420-46. Gellner, E. 1964 Thought and change. London. Gluckman, M. 1959 The frailty in authority. In M. Gluckman, Custom and conflict in Africa. Oxford, pp 27-53. Griffin, K.B. & Enos, J.L. 1970 Planning development. London. Hammond, J.L. & Hammond, B. 1978 The village labourer. London. Hamnett, I. 1973 The role of the anthropologist in local planning. Journal of Development Studies, vol 9, no 4, pp 493-507. Hanson, A.H. 1966 The process of planning: A study of India's five-year plans 1950-1964. London.

318

Chapters 4 and 6 1968 Power shifts and regional balances. In P. Streeten & M. Lipton, The crisis in Indian planning. London, pp 19-60. Harrison, J.P. 1970 The communists and Chinese peasant rebellions: A study in the rewriting of history. London. Hawthorn, G. 1976 Enlightenment and despair: A history of sociology. Cambridge. Hetzler, S.A. 1973 Applied measures for promoting technological growth. London. Hobsbawm, E J . 1959 Primitive rebels: Studies in archaic forms of social movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. Manchester. Holyoake, G.J. 1908 The history of co-operation. London. Huntington, S.P. 1968 Political order in changing societies. New Haven, Conn. Inkeles, A. & Smith, D.H. 1964 Becoming modern: Individual change in six developing countries. Cambridge. Ionescu, G. & Gellner, E. 1969 Populism: Its meanings and national characteristics. London. Kedourie, E. 1966 Nationalism. London. Kerblay, B. 1980 Peasant family economy in the USSR today. In E. J. Hobsbawm et al. (eds.), Peasants in history. Calcutta, pp 69-82. Kitching, G. 1982 Development and underdevelopment in historical perspective: Populism, nationalism and industrialization. London. Laclau, E. 1977 Towards a theory of populism. In E. Laclau, Politics and ideology in Marxist theory. London. Lasky, M.J. 1976 Utopia and revolution: on the origins of a metaphor, or some illustrations of the problem of political temperament and climate and how ideas, ideals and ideologies have been historically related. Chicago. Lehmann, D. 1977 Neo-classical populism. Peasant Studies, vol 6, no 4, pp 131-6. Levtzion, N. 1973 Ancient Ghana and Mali. London. Lewis, 1.1975 Obituary: Glynn Flood. Royal Anthropological Institute News, no 11,p6. Little, K.L. 1965 West African urbanization: A study of voluntary associations in social change. Cambridge. Lockwood, M. 1965 The experimental Utopia in America. Daedalus, vol 94, no 2, pp 410-18. Macrae, D. 1969 Populism as an ideology. In G. Ionescu & E. Gellner, Populism: Its meanings and national characteristics. London, pp 153-65. Malinowski, B. 1954 Magic, science and religion and other essays. New York. Mannheim, K. 1936 Ideology and Utopia: An introduction to the sociology of knowledge. London. Manuel, F.E. & Manuel, F.P. 1979 Utopian thought in the Western world. Oxford. Markakis, J. 1974 Ethiopia: anatomy of a traditional polity. Oxford. Marx, K. 1958a The civil war in France. In K. Marx & F. Engels, Selected works, vol 1. Moscow, pp 473-545. 1958b Marginal notes to the programme of the German Workers' Party (Critique of the Gotha Programme). In K. Marx & F. Engels, Selected works, vol 2. Moscow, pp 18-37. Marx, K. & Engels, F. 1967 The communist manifesto. Harmondsworth. Mead, M. 1976 The future as the basis for establishing a shared culture. In W.G. Bennis et al. (eds.), The planning of change. New York, pp 444-58.

319

Bibliography Meyerowitz, E.L.R. 1962 At the court of an African king. London. Meynaud, J. 1964 Technocracy. London. Minogue, K. 1969 Populism as a political movement. In G. Ionescu & E. Gellner, Populism: Its meanings and national characteristics. London, pp 197-211. Mooney, J. 1965 The Ghost Dance religion and the Sioux outbreak of 1890. Chicago. Moore, B. 1967 Social origins of dictatorship and democracy: Lord and peasant in the making of the modern world. Harmondsworth. More, T. (1516) n.d. Utopia. London. Morgan, A.E. 1946 Nowhere was somewhere: How history makes Utopias and how Utopias make history. Chapel Hill, N.C. Moser, C. 1979 Informal sector or petty commodity production: Dualism or dependence in urban development? In R. Bromley, The urban informal sector: Critical perspectives on employment and housing policies. London, pp 1041-64. Mumford, L. 1923 The story of Utopias: Ideal commonwealths and social myths. London. Nettl, J.P. 1969 Strategies in the study of political development. In C. Leys, Politics and change in developing countries. Cambridge, pp 13-34. Nordhoff, C. 1966 The communistic societies of the United States. From personal visit and observation. New York. Peel, J.D.Y. 1978 Qlajw. a Yoruba concept of development. Journal of Development Studies, vol 14, no 2, pp 139-65. Pocock, D. 1968 Social anthropology: its contribution to planning. In P. Streeten & M. Lipton, The crisis in Indian planning: Economic planning in the 1960s. London, pp 271-89. Popper, K. 1965 Utopia and violence. In Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. London, pp 355-63. Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1980 Applied anthropology. In G. Dalton, Research in economic anthropology, vol 3, Greenwich, Conn., pp 123-34. Rey, P.P. 1979 Class contradiction in lineage societies. Critique of Anthropology, vol 4, nos 13/14, pp 41-60. Robertson, A.F. 1975a Anthropology and government in Ghana. African Affairs, vol 74, no 294, pp 51-9. 1975b Anthropology and the nomad: another view of the Afar. Royal Anthropological Institute News, no 8, pp 7-9. 1978 Community of strangers: A journal of discovery in Uganda. London. 1982 Uganda's first republic: Chiefs, administrators and politicians, 1967-71. Cambridge. Rybczynski, W. 1980 Paper heroes: A review of appropriate technology. New York. Schumacher, E.F. 1973 Small is beautiful: A study of economics as if people mattered. London. Scott, J.C. 1976 The moral economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven. Shanin, T. 1972 The awkward class: Political sociology of peasantry in a developing society. Russia 1910-1925. Oxford. Sigmund, P.E. 1963 The ideologies of the developing nations. New York. Skocpol, T. 1979 States and social revolutions. A comparative analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge. 320

Chapter 5 Stewart, A. 1969 The social roots. In G. Ionescu & E. Gellner, Populism: Its meanings and national characteristics. London, pp 180-96. Thomas, J.L. 1967 Introduction. In E. Bellamy, Looking backward 2999-1887. Cambridge, Mass., pp 1-87. Wallman, S. 1977 Perceptions of development. Cambridge. Wilde, O. n.d. The soul of man under socialism. Boston. Wiles, P. 1969 A syndrome, not a doctrine: some elementary theses on populism. In G. Ionescu & E. Gellner, Populism: Its meanings and national characteristics. London, pp 166-79. Wilson, B. 1973 Magic and the millennium. London. Wolf, E.R. 1971 Peasant wars of the twentieth century. London. Womack, J. 1972 Zapata and the Mexican revolution. Harmondsworth. Worsley, P. 1957 The trumpet shall sound: A study of 'cargo' cults in Melanesia. London. 1967 Populism. In P. Worsley, The Third World. London, pp 118-74. 1969 The concept of populism. In G. Ionescu & E. Gellner, Populism: Its meanings and national characteristics. London, pp 212-50. Wortman, R. 1967 The crisis of Russian populism. Cambridge. D: Chapter 5

Amin, M. & Caldwell, M. 1977 Malaya: The making of a neo-colony. Nottingham. Beaglehole, J.H. 1976 The district: A study of decentralization in West Malaysia. London. Bhanoji Roa, V.V. 1980 Malaysia: Development pattern and policy 1947-1971. Singapore. Bray, F.A. & Robertson, A.F. 1980 Sharecropping in Kelantan, Malaysia. In G. Dalton (ed.), Research in economic anthropology, vol 3, Greenwich, Conn., pp. 209-44. DNU - Department of National Unity 1975 Community relations programme: A step towards strengthening national unity. Kuala Lumpur. Caiden, N. & Wildavsky, A. 1974 Planning and budgeting in poor countries. London. Carlson, S. 1975 Malaysia: Search for national unity and economic growth. Beverly Hills. Chan, P. 1982 A comment on the FELDA model and a suggestion for another. CCSEAS-ISEAS Joint International Conference on Village-Level Modernization. Singapore. Cheong, K.C., Khoo, S.M. & Thillainathan, R. 1979 Malaysia: Some contemporary issues in socioeconomic development. Kuala Lumpur. Emerson, R. 1937 Malaysia: A study in direct and indirect rule. London. Esman, M.J. 1972 Administration and development in Malaysia: Institution building and reform in a plural society. Ithaca. Fisk, E.K. 1963 Rural development policy. In T.H. Silcock & E.K. Fisk, The political economy of independent Malaya: A case study in development. Berkeley, pp 174-94. Furnivall, J.S. 1948 Colonial policy and practice: A comparative study of Burma and Netherlands India. Cambridge.

321

Bibliography Gibbons, D.S. & Zakaria Hji. Ahmad 1971 Politics and selection for the higher civil service in new states: The Malaysia example. Journal of Comparative Administration, vol 3, no 3, pp 330-48. Gibbons, D.S., De Koninck, R. & Hasan, I. 1980 Agricultural modernization, poverty and inequality: The distributional impact of the green revolution in regions of Malaysia and Indonesia. Farnborough. Gullick, J.M. 1958. Indigenous political systems of Western Malaysia. London. Hasan, P. 1980 Growth, structural change and social process. In K. Young & W.C.F. Bussink, Malaysia: Growth and equity in a multiracial society. Baltimore, pp 23-59. Hitam, C. 1968 A study of social relationship in a resettlement scheme. Dissertation, Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Singapore. Husin Ali, S. 1975 Malay peasant society and leadership. London. ICU - Implementation Coordination Unit 1981 Malaysia's pragmatic route to rapid growth. Kuala Lumpur. IBRD - International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1955 The economic development of Malaya. Baltimore. Lee, G. 1973 Commodity production and reproduction amongst the Malaysian peasantry. Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol 3, pp 441-56. Lewis, W.A. 1966 Development planning: The essentials of economic policy. London. Lim, D. 1975 Readings on Malaysian economic development. Kuala Lumpur. Lim, M.H. & Anderson, M. 1979 Concentration of wealth and power in the top corporations in Malaysia. In K.C. Cheong, S.M. Khoo & R. Thillainathan, Malaysia: Some contemporary issues in socioeconomic development. Kuala Lumpur, pp 35-48. Little, I.M.D. & Tipping, D.G. 1972 A social cost benefit analysis of the Kulai oil palm estate. Paris. Mac Andrews, C. 1977 Mobility and modernisation: The Federal Land Development Authority and its role in modernising the rural Malay. Yogyakarta. Mac Andrews, C. & Yamamoto, K. 1977 A note on unemployment and regional planning in peninsular Malaysia. Malayan Economic Review, vol 22, no 2. Malaysia, Government of 1965 First Malaysia Plan 1966-1970 (IMP). Kuala Lumpur. 1970 Rukunegara. Kuala Lumpur. 1971 Second Malaysia Plan 1971-1975 (2MP). Kuala Lumpur. 1973 Mid-term review of the Second Malaysia Plan 1971-1975 (2MPMTR). Kuala Lumpur. 1976 Third Malaysia Plan 1976-1980 (3MP). Kuala Lumpur. 1981 Fourth Malaysia Plan 1981-1985 (4MP). Kuala Lumpur. Ministry of Finance, Government of Malaysia 1980 Economic report 1980-81. Kuala Lumpur. Means, G.P. 1976 Malaysian politics. London. Meerman, J. 1979 Public expenditure in Malaysia: Who benefits and why. London. Milne, R.S. 1970 'National ideology' and nation-building in Malaysia. Asian Survey, vol 10, no 7, pp 563-73. Milne, R.S. & Mauzy, Diane K. 1977 Politics and government in Malaysia. Singapore. Milne, R.S. & Ratnam, K. J. 1974 Malaysia: New states in a new nation. London. 322

Chapter 5 Montgomery, J.D. & Esman, M.J. 1966 Development administration in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur. Ness, G.D. 1967 Bureaucracy and rural development in Malaysia: A study in complex organizations in stimulating economic development in new states. Berkeley. Nove, A. 1969 Soviet political organization and development. In C. Leys, Politics and change in developing countries. Cambridge, pp 65-84. ORT - Office of Rukun Tetangga 1976 Rukun Tetangga. Kuala Lumpur. Omar, E. 1980 Policy analysis and development in Malaysia. Occasional Paper no 1 of the Institute of Public Administration (INTAN), Kuala Lumpur. Ooi, J.B. 1963 Land, people and economy in Malaya. London. Peacock, F. 1980 The failure of rural development in peninsular Malaysia. In J.C. Jackson & M. Rudner, Issues in Malaysian development. Singapore, pp 375-96. Purcell, V. 1948 The Chinese in Malaya. London. Puthucheary, M. 1978 The politics of administration: The Malaysian experience. Kuala Lumpur. 1979 The control of public enterprises with special reference to state economic development corporations. In K.C. Cheong, S.M. Khoo & R. Thillainathan, Malaysia: Some contemporary issues in socioeconomic development. Kuala Lumpur, pp 193-204. Ratnam, K.J. 1965 Communalism and the political process in Malaya. Kuala Lumpur. Robertson, A.F. 1975 A new kind of Malaysian? A sociological view of the Federal Land Development Authority. Journal of Administration Overseas, vol 14, no 1, pp 30-8. Scott, J.C. 1968 Political ideology in Malaysia: Reality and the beliefs of an elite. New Haven, Conn. Shamsul Amri, B. 1979a Theoretical orientations of the Second Malaysia Plan. In K.C. Cheong, S.M. Khoo & R. Thillainathan, Malaysia: Some contemporary issues in socioeconomic development. Kuala Lumpur, pp 3-9. 1979b FELDA land schemes. In K.C. Cheong, S.M. Khoo and R. Thillainathan, Malaysia: Some contemporary issues in socioeconomic development. Kuala Lumpur, pp 215-24. Shamsul Bahrin, Tunku & Perera, P.D. A. 1977 Felda - 21 years of land development. Kuala Lumpur. Shaw, W. 1976 Tun Razak: His life and times. Kuala Lumpur. Silcock, T.H. & E.K. Fisk 1963 The political economy of independent Malaya: A case-study in development. Berkeley. Snodgrass, D.R. 1980 Inequality and economic development in Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur. Strauch, J. 1981a Chinese village politics and the Malaysian state. Cambridge, Mass. 1981b Chinese New Villages of the Malayan Emergency, a generation later: A case study. Contemporary Southeast Asia, vol 3, no 2, pp 126-39. Subkey, A.W. 1977 Development planning and administration in Malaysia. Hawaii. Tan, L.H. 1981 The state and the distribution of wealth within the Malay society in peninsular Malaysia. Southeast Asian Affairs 1981 (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies). Singapore, pp 217-32. Thillainathan, R. 1979 Public enterprises in Malaysia: problems and prospects. In 323

Bibliography K.C. Cheong, S.M. Khoo & R. Thill ainathan, Malaysia: Some contemporary issues in socioeconomic development. Kuala Lumpur, pp 169-78. Thoburn, J.T. 1977 Primary commodity exports and economic development: Theory, evidence and a study of Malaysia. London. Von Vorys, K. 1975 Democracy without consensus: Communalism and political stability in Malaysia. Princeton. Wafa, S. 1972 Land development strategies in Malaysia: an empirical study. Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University. Waterston, A. 1965 Development Planning: Lessons from experience. Baltimore. Wilson, P. J. 1967 A Malay village and Malaysia: Social values and rural development. New Haven, Conn. Young, K. 1980 The New Economic Policy and long-term development issues. In K. Young, W.C.F. Bossink & P. Hasan, Malaysia: Growth and equity in a multiracial society. Baltimore, pp 60-96.

324

Index

adaptation, 28-9 Abdul Kadir Shamsuddin, 256 Abdul Razak, see Tun Abdul Razak Abdul Rahman, see Tungku Abdul Rahman Africa, 49-50, 60, 97, 120,152,190, 224 Agricultural Trade and Assistance Act, 1954 (USA), 71, 81 aid, 8, 9, 11, 22-3, 34-6, 38-41, 69-74, 92, 100,124-5,129-31, 203, 235, 275, 291 Aiyetoro, Nigeria, 197, see also Olowo American Federation of Labor, 63 American Indians, 196, 205, 296-7 American International Association for Economic and Social Development (AIA), 132 Amin, Samir, 226 anthropology, 2-3, 5-6, 17, 30, 45-6, 51, 85-7,106-7, 123,125-8, 136-7, 140,145, 167,186,191,195, 199-200, 204, 220, 224, 228, 231, 293-306 Argentina, 80, 226 Arusha Declaration, 1967, 37, 83 Arussi Agricultural Development Unit, Ethiopia, 132 Associacao de Credito e Assistencia Rural (ACAR), Brazil, 132 balanced growth, 31-2 Bandung conference, 1955, 36, 81 Bangladesh, 44, 69-71, 116, 131, 168-70, 275 Bangladesh Volunteer Service, 70 Baran, Paul, 49 Barbados, 91-2 Barnett, Tony, 52-5 Bastide,R.,2, 194, 196,206 Bauer, P.T., 67 Belgium, 21, 78, 82 325

Bellamy, Edward, 218-19 Belshaw, C.S., 208, 295, 301, 305 Bengal Famine Code, 15 Beveridge Report, 1942, 19, 79 Bilut project, Malaysia, 278 Boeke,J.H.,17 Bolivia, 7, 36 Bolsheviks, 10-11, 75, 78, 206-7, 229, 255 Borneo, 245 Brandt, Willy, 57, 60, 84 Brazil, 40, 50,132,148 BrettonWoods,23,79 Brezhnev, Leonid, 212 Briggs, General, 240 British East India Company, 236 Brunei, 245 Bukharin, N., 10,142, 165, 215 Bukit Besar scheme, Malaysia, 264, 266, 268, 277-80, 287 Bulgaria, 80-1,91 bureaucracy, 4,141,150-6, 158-9, 165, 167, 170-4, 176, 225-6, 2 4 1 ^ Burma, 126 Caisse Centrale de la France d'Outre-Mer (CCFOM),21 Cambodia, 82 Camelot, 47 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK), 81 Canada,38,82,97,135 capitalism, 7-9, 11-13, 22, 25, 30-1, 40, 49, 51-2, 55-6, 58, 64, 81, 98, 129,137, 142,150,169,183,195,206,213-14, 216, 218, 220, 224, 258, 296 Cardenas, Lazaro, 210 Carter, Jimmy, 40, 73, 84, 212 caste, 47, 223 Chad, 148 Charles River Approach, 45 Chenery, Hollis, 59

Index Chiang Kai-shek, 84 Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit (CADU), Ethiopia, 45,131-3, 203 Chile, 48, 103 China, 36-7, 40-3, 47, 64, 68, 81-4, 101, 116,118,121,133,143,164-5, 211-12, 221, 223, 230, 237, 301 China Aid Act, 1948 (USA), 22, 80 ChouEn-lai,40,83 Church World Service, 45 class, 95, 98, 118, 120,143,192, 206, 223, 229-30, 233, 243-4, 283^ Clastres, Pierre, 296-7 Clothe the Nudes, 70 Cold War, 23-4, 31, 35, 79, 81 collectivism, 11, 161, 166 Colombia, 50, 82 Colombo Plan, 20, 81,112 Colonial Development Act, 1929 (UK), 16, 78 Colonial Development and Welfare Act, 1940 (UK), 19, 79, 134; revised, 1945,19,23,37,79, 134,239 Colonial Development Fund, France, 21 colonial rule, 3, 8-9, 15, 17, 19-21, 37, 50, 52,54-5,95-6,120,154-5,163,179, 190,195, 207-8, 223, 226-7, 230, 235,238,240,244-5,291 COMECON, see Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Comilla project, Bangladesh, 44-5,68,131, 162,168 command economy, 9, 11, 24, 63-4,101 Commissariat General du Plan, France, 21, 90 committees, 140-1, 170-5 communes, 133,140-1, 143, 146,150, 160-70, 198-200, 209, 219 communism, 37, 143, 151, 161, 165-6,169, 195, 206, 212-16, 225, 236, 240-1, 245, 254-5, 275-6, 284, 287, 291 Communist Information Bureau (COMINFORM),80-1 community, 4,141-50 Community Development Programme (CDP), India, 149-50,154,157,159, 172,178 Condorcet, Marquis of, 218 Congo, 15,21,78 Congress of Industrial Organizations, USA, 63 convergence theory, 33-4 cooperativism, 17, 45, 132, 140-1, 146, 160-70, 189, 201, 224, 242, 265-6, 292 Cooperative Society (UK), 160-1 Co-prosperity Sphere (Japan), 19

326

Corsica, 217 Costa Rica, 114 cost-benefit analysis, 13-14, 122^, 126-8, 263 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA), USSR, 22, 40, 60, 64, 81, 84,118 councils, 140-1, 170-5, 189, 292 Cromwell, Oliver, 217 Cuba, 36, 79, 81, 221 Cultural Revolution, China, 36-7, 83 culture, 49,106, 137,184-6 Czechoslovakia, 64, 80-1 Dalena, India, 188 Danquah, J.B.,228 Datuk Hussein Onn, 258, 270, 280 decadence, xi, 9, 18, 57-8, 160, 298 De Gaulle, Charles, 65 democracy, 9,31-3,35,39-40,56,75,76^7, 108, 127, 137, 151, 172-3, 177, 287 demonstration effect, 31 Department of Economic Affairs, UK, 76 Department of Technical Cooperation, UK, 82 Depression, 8, 10, 12, 14, 19, 240 Development and Reconstruction Authority (DARA), Kenya, 134 Development Coordination Committee, USA, 84 Development Opportunity Team (DOT), Kenya, 136 Development Studies, 43-8 Diaz, Porfirio, 208 Diggers, 226 Dimptu project, Ethiopia, 203-4 disasters, 57-8, 70 disequilibrium, 32-3, 262 dual economy, 29 Dumbarton Oaks, 23 Dunn, John, xii, 9, 192, 206-11, 216, 220 Durkheim, Emile, 28, 218 Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ERSCAP), 80 Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), 60,82 Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East(ECAFE),80 Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA),50, 60, 80,97 Economic Co-operation Administration (ECA), 22, 80 Economic Support Fund, USA, 73 Ecuador, 121 education, 31, 45, 141, 175-81, 260 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 39

Index ejido, Medico, 162, 209-10, 224 Empire Marketing Board, UK, 16, 78 Engels, F., 78,161,165, 195, 206 Enlightenment, 217 entrepreneurs, 25,30-1,168-9,239,263-4, 271 Epstein, Scarlett, 188 Ethiopia, 45, 67, 131-2, 203-4, 301 ethnicity, 228, 236-8, 252, 254, 257, 259, 278-83,289 European Economic Community (EEC), 22,65,82,146 European Recovery Plan, USA, 22, 70-1, 75,80,112 evolutionary functionalism, 27, 32, 34, 108, 143, 145, 213, 258, 270, see also modernisation expatriates, 96-7, 135-6, 235, 257 Faber, Mike, 96 Fabian Society, 19 fascism, 142, 226 Federal Land Development Authority (FLDA), Malaysia, 129, 199, 232-3, 235-6, 239-40, 244-9, 260-9, 27580,285-7,291,303 Ferguson, Adam, 218 feudalism, 131-2, 203^4 FIFI, 66 Fiji, 7, 152 Finland, 7 Finley,M.I.,xii, 196 Five Unifiers, China, 42, 101 Fond d'Investissement et de Developpement Economique et Social (FIDES), 21 Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 23,35,60,69,79 Ford Foundation, 44, 251 Foreign Aid Act, 1977 (USA), 40, 84 Foreign Assistance Act, 1961 (USA), 39-40,71,73,82-4 Four Modernisations, China, 43 Fourier, F.M.C., 302 France, 7, 9, 18, 20-1, 50, 65-6, 79-81, 83, 90-1,121, 162,179 Frank, Andre Gunder, 51, 5 3 ^ , 226, 304 Frazer,J.G., 191 French Imperial Economic Conference, 1934-5,21,79 Fulbright, Senator, 47 functionalism, see evolutionary functionalism Furnivall, J.S., 17 Gaitskell, Arthur, 52-4 Galton, Francis, 13 327

Gandhi, Mahatma, 44, 149, 172, 226, 230 Gellner, Ernest, 8,10,34,99,148,178,213, 214, 218, 228 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 80 George, Timothy, 207 Germany, 13,80-1,200 Gezira scheme, Sudan, 15, 52-4, 235, 246 Ghana, 15, 36-7, 78, 145, 152, 154, 170-3, 178,190, 228 Ghazali Shafie, 252, 255-6 Ghost Dance movement, USA, 205 Giscard d'Estaing, Valery, 65 GOELRO,USSR,78 Gold Coast, 15, 78, see also Ghana GOSPLAN, USSR, 62, 65, 78, 104, 133 Gramsci, Aldo, 226 Great Leap Forward: China, 36, 42, 82; Russia, 11 Great Uhuru Railway, Tanzania-Zambia, 41,84 Greece, 21 Gross National Product per capita (pcGNP),25 Guggisberg, Governor, 15, 78 Guinea, 37, 113 Guyana, 109, 117 Haile Selassie, 131 Hamnett, Ian, 299-300 Hanson, A.H., 92, 98, 104-6, 145, 227, 301 harmony, 146-7 Harmony Society, Pennsylvania, 200, 219 Harrington, James, 217 Harvard University Development Advisory Service, 44—5 Hertzka, Theodor, 218 historical materialism, 213 Hitler, Adolf, 19 Hobhouse,L.T., 13 Hodson, William, 201 Holmberg, Allan, 46 Honduras, 20, 126 Hong Kong, 7, 63, 115, 152 Hot Springs conference, 23 Hungary, 80-1 Huq, Azizul, 131 Hutterian colony, USA, 162, 202 ideology, 5,26,98-100,142,221-31,252^, 256, 260, 298 imperative planning, 64-6 Independent Commission on International Development Issues (ICIDI), 84 India, 9, 16-17, 20, 26, 38, 47, 50, 57, 62, 66-7, 79-82, 90-2, 97-8, 100, 102, 104-5, 107, 112, 119, 144-5, 148-50,

Index India (cont.) 152,154, 157, 159, 162, 168, 172-3, 178, 188, 191,196, 207, 220, 223, 227,229-30 Indian Planning and Development Department, 20 Indian Planning Commission, 20, 81, 191 indicative planning, 9, 64-6, 101, 129 Indicative World Plan for Agriculture (IWPA),60 Indo-China, 39 Indonesia, 9, 103, 108, 124, 227, 245, 261, 275 Industrial Coordination Act, 1975 (Malaya), 261 industrial revolution, 184, 217-18 industrialisation, 2, 8, 10-11, 24, 26-7, 33, 50,55,67,142-3,151,184,187,195, 214, 216, 218, 224, 227 innovation, 30,148 input-output analysis, 119, 122 integration, 27, 29, 34, 61,108, 147, 258 international agencies, 9, 60, 70, 92 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), see World Bank International Cooperation Administration, USA, 71, 81 International Development Agency (IDA), 82 International Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA), 74, 84 International Labour Organisation (ILO), 17,78,81,226 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 23,69 International Workers movement, 208 Iran, 40, 91, 116-17, 121 Iron Guard, 226 Israel, 161-4, 167, 199 Italy, 82 Ivory Coast, 154 Jamaica, 67 Japan,19,24-5,47,81-2 Johnson, Lyndon B., 39 Kampuchea, 70 Kaunda, Kenneth, 108 Kennedy, Edward, 46 Kennedy, John F., 35, 39-40, 45, 71, 82 Kenya, 38, 91,97,104,110,112,116,118, 120,124-5,134-6,218,228 Kenyatta, Jomo, 108 Keynes, John Maynard, 12-13,66,75,78-9 Khan, Akhter Hameed, 44-6 Khrushchev, Nikita, 212 kibbutz, 162-5,167,200 328

kolkhoz, 53,161-2,165, 167, 169 Korea, 22, 36, 39, 81,90 Korean Aid Act, 1949 (USA), 81 Kosygin, A., 83 Kuwait, 70 Labourers' Revolt, 192 laissezfaire economy, 63, 76, 179, 290 Land Grant Colleges, USA, 17, 44 Laos, 82 Latin America, 39-40, 46-51, 60, 82, 97 League of Nations, 17, 23, 78 Lenin, V.I., 13, 55, 165, 207, 211, 213-14, 221,226 Leopold, King of the Belgians, 15, 21, 78 Lesotho, 39,122,166-7 Levy, M.J., 33-4 Lewis, W. Arthur, 19-20, 87-9, 93-4, 98, 121,251 liberalism, 5-6, 12-13, 18, 25, 26-7, 31, 37, 129, 137, 142-3, 165,169, 177-8, 184,213,216,219-21,224,227,231, 233,252,267,298,301 Liberia, 108 Lipton, Michael, 9, 58, 117, 179, 226, 229 Liechtenstein, 7 McCarthy, Joseph, 24 MacDonald, Malcolm, 19 McLuhan, Marshall, 175 Macmillan, Harold, 75 McNamara, Robert, 58 macro-economics, 12, 101, 107, 116, 121, 129, 289 Madero, Francisco, 208 magic, 68, 92,106, 107,158,191 Mahathir Mohamad, 289 Maheu, Rene, 92 Malaya, 53, 117, 154 Malaysia, 4, 8, 95, 108, 117, 119, 129, 148, 175,199,232-92,301,303 Malinowski, B., 68,107, 191, 305 Malta, 101 Manea Fen, Cambridgeshire, 201 Mannheim, Karl, 98, 212 Mao Tse-tung, 42-3, 84, 133, 223, 226, 301 MARA, Malaysia, 242, 261-2, 283-5 Marching Rule, Solomon Islands, 207-8, 210 market economy, 10-12,18-19,23,27,100, 187, 195,213,290,292 Marshall Plan, 22, 70-1, 75, 80, 112 Marx, Karl, 13, 25, 78, 143, 145, 161, 165, 195, 206, 213-14,218 marxism, 6,10,13,48-9,51-2,54-6,58,98, 142, 166, 184, 206, 212, 215, 219, 227,229,231,284,298,301

Index mass media, 141-2, 175-81 Mau Mau, 135 Meek,C.K.,17 Meier, Richard, 31 Mekane Jesus church, Ethiopia, 203 Melanesia, 17, 207 Mensheviks, 207 Mexico, 109, 162, 208-12, 224 Michigan State University, 44 micro-economics, 12,102, 107, 116 millenarianism, 161, 195-6, 205-7, 214 modernisation, 18, 25, 26-35, 48, 51, 55, 145,147-8,183, 186, 213, 216, 221, 224, 258, 277, 295, am*see evolutionary functionalism Mohamed Noor Ghani, 271 Mongolia, 81 Montano, Otilio, 209 Moore, Sir Henry, 134 More, Sir Thomas, 196, 217 Moshav, Israel, 161-2 Moshav-ovdim, 162-4 Moshav-shitufiyim, 162, 164 Moyne Commission, 19, 79 Muda scheme, Malaysia, 246 Mutual Security Agency, USA, 80 Myrdal, Gunnar, 62 Nanda, Guzarilal, 191 Narodnichestvo, 224, 229-30 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 229 Nath,S.K.,31 nation states, 2, 8,11, 61, 67,148, 150-1, 160,183-4, 217-18, 223, 303-4 National Community Development Project, UK, 77 National Development Planning Committee (NDPC), Malaysia, 240, 251, 274 National Economic Development Council and Office (Neddy), UK, 75, 83 National Planning Committee, India, 16 National Planning Council, India, 105 national plans Bangladesh: First Five-Year Plan (1973-8), 70 Chile: First Ten-Year Plan, 103 China: First Five-Year Plan (1953-7), 42 Colombia: General Plan for Economic and Social Development (1961-70), 50,82 Ethiopia: national plans, 203; Second Five-Year Plan (1963-7), 67 France: First National Plan (1947-50), 18; Fifth Economic and Social Plan (1966), 83 Guinea: Three-Year Plan (1960-3), 113

329

India: Second Report on Reconstruction and Planning (1945), 20; First Five-Year Development Plan (1951), 20, 31, 149; Third Five-Year Plan, 112; Fourth Five-Year Plan (1969-74), 100, 105-6, 112 Indonesia: Eight-Year Plan (1945), 103 Jamaica: Plan (1957-67), 67 Kenya: First Ten-Year Plan, 135 Lesotho: Third Five-Year Plan (19805), 39, 122 Malaya: Second Plan (1960-5), 251 Malaysia: First Plan (1966-70), 232, 239, 247-52, 281; Second Plan (1971-5), 232, 245, 247-8, 255, 257, 259-60, 262, 281, 291; Third Plan (1976-80), 232, 245-6, 254, 258-9, 262, 269-76, 281, 284, 291; Fourth Plan (1981-5), 232, 245-6, 261, 265, 271,280-91 Malta: Plan (1964-9), 101 Pakistan: First Five-Year Plan (1954), 103,114 Sierra Leone: Plan of Economic Development, 20 Soviet Union: First Soviet Five-Year Plan (1928), 10-11, 66 Sudan: Ten-Year Plan (1961/2-70/1), 96 Tanganyika: Five-Year Plan (1955), 37, 83; Three-Year Plan (1961), 37 Tanzania: First Five-Year Plan (19649), 37, 96; Second Five-Year Plan (1969-74), 37 Uganda: Development Plan (1946), 20 United Kingdom: National Plan (1965-70), 12, 76-7,83 National Resources Planning Board, USA, 79 National Social and Economic Development Advisory Council, Kenya, 135 nationalisation^, 52, 75, 261 nationalism, 36-7, 43, 142,184, 218-19, 223, 226-8 Nehru, Pandit, 16, 20, 36,102, 227, 229 Netherlands, 21,38, 50, 82 New Deal, 1933-7 (USA), 14-17, 79, 212, 219 New Economic Policy (NEP), Malaysia, 255-61, 270-1, 274-5, 282-4, 290-1 New Economic Policy, USSR, 10 New International Economic Order (NIEO),57 New Lanark, Scotland, 160 New Order, Germany, 19 New World Information Order (NWIO), 179-80 Nigeria, 17, 54, 79, 83, 96, 119, 161-2, 178,

Index Nigeria (cont.) 197-9, 202-3 Nkrumah, Kwame, 37, 152, 154, 228-9 Norway, 91,117,121,135 Noyes, John Humphrey, 201 nucleation, 148 Nyerere, Julius, 37, 41, 128, 134, 161, 163, 166,179,223,229 Obote, Milton, 211 obstacles to development, 30-1, 294 Olowo, Nigeria, 162,197-200, 202-3, 303 Oneida Perfectionists, 201-2, 219 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 22, 80, 82, 96, 123, 275 Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), 22, 80, 82 Organisation of African Unity (OAU), 83 Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 58, 70, 84 Overseas Development Administration (ODA),UK, 83 Owen, Robert, 160-1,192, 201, 213 OXFAM, 70 package projects, 15,39,119,124-5,131-2, 248 Pahang Tenggara project, Malaysia, 248 Pakistan, 44,80,103,105,114,162,172, see also Bangladesh Palestine, 164 Pant, Pitambar, 92 Papua New Guinea, 275 Peace Corps, USA, 46, 82 Peron, Juan, 80, 226 Peru, 45-6, 50,152, 224 Peshawar, Pakistan, 44 Philippines, 275 Plan of Ayala, 209-10 Plan Pleven, France, 21, 90 Plato, 177 pluralism, 236-44, 291 Poland, 64, 80-1,162-3 policy, 3, 41-2, 59, 73, 87,100, 255-60 Poor Law, 1601 (England), 78 Popper, Karl, 213 populism, 5-6, 58, 99, 130, 137,142, 148, 164, 180, 184, 219, 221-31, 258, 295-7, 305 poverty, 58-9, 67, 257, 263, 267-8, 274 Poujadists, 226 Prebisch, Raul, 50, 57 Preobrazhensky, E., 10, 142, 165, 215 prices and incomes policies, 12 prisoners' dilemma, 65 private voluntary organisations, 69, 70, 73 330

professionalisation, 66,85,88-97,151,183, 299 project appraisal techniques, 122-4, 128, 263 Project Identification and Evaluation Unit, Kenya, 97 Project Identification Documents, 73 Project Papers, 73 projects, 120-8 Prosperity Fund, Netherlands, 21 Public Law 480, USA, 71, 73, 81 Quakers' Community Development Service, 45 racial conflict, see ethnicity Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., 299 Rapp, George, 200 Rattray, R.S., 17 Reagan, Ronald, 40 recession, 9, 58, 236 Red Books, Malaysia, 250, 289 reformism, 5, 9-10, 32, 55, 64, 160-1, 169, 184, 192-204, 207-9, 212, 215, 219, 221-3,225,230,292,303-5 regions, 115-20, 246 Research and Development (R & D), 44-5 revolution, 5, 10, 12-13, 24, 51, 54-6, 67, 183-4, 192-7, 202, 204-16, 219, 221-2, 225, 229-31, 254-5, 304-5 China, 37, 42 Cuba, 36 Ethiopia, 132, 203-4 Mexico, 208-10, 212 Russia, 8-12, 78, 95, 161, 206-7 Rhodesia, 41 Robbins, Lionel, 60 Robless,C.L.,257 Rochdale Pioneers, UK, 160-1 rolling plans, 114 Romania, 81 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 12, 14, 79, 219 Rostow, W.W., 25, 28, 30, 3^5, 108 Rousseau, J.J., 217 Rural and Industrial Development Authority (RIDA), Malaysia, 239, 261 Russia (Soviet Union), 7-11, 13, 16, 19, 22-3, 25-6, 34-6, 40, 42, 44, 51, 53, 55-6, 62-6, 68, 70, 75, 78-84, 95, 104,111-13,116,119,129,133,156, 161-2, 165, 167, 180, 199, 206-7, 212, 221-2, 224, 230, 243, 275 Sabah, 245 Sahel, 57 Sarawak, 245 Sarraut, Albert, 21

Index Schumacher, E.F., 225 sectors, 115-20, 257, 270 Selznick, Philip, xii, 4,14,18,107,128,131, 140,158 Sen, K.N., 17 Senegal, 162, 169 SESAME, 66 Shastri, Lai Bahadur, 105 Shaw, George Bernard, 75 Sierra Leone, 20 Singapore, 36, 245, 275 Sinn Fein, 226 Sino-Soviet Alliance Treaty, 81 Smith, Adam, 12 social science, 5-7, 17, 27, 30, 44, 47-51, 55-6, 58, 98, 128, 136, 144, 151, 183-4, 189,191,194, 196, 211-21, 224,226,231,235,294-5,297,302-5 socialism, 5, 10, 18, 26, 55-6, 60, 63, 67, 137,142-3,161,165,169,178,184, 207, 213-14, 216, 220-1, 226-7, 229, 260, 267, 288 socialist states, 7, 9,11, 22, 25, 34, 40, 51, 55-6, 65, 91, 100, 103, 115-16, 118, 123,133,150,199 sociobiology, 302 Solomon Islands, 207-8 Soto y Gama, Diaz, 209-10 South Korean Planning Board, 90 Soviet Union, see Russia Speenhamland system, 160 Spencer, Herbert, 28 Sri Lanka, 91 Stalin, Josef, 8, 11, 23-4, 42, 64, 78, 129, 165, 207, 212 Stolper, Wolfgang, 96 Subba Rao, N.S., 17 Sudan, 15, 52-4, 96, 246 Sukarno, Achmed, 108, 227, 245 Surinam, 21 Sussex University Institute of Development Studies, 59 Swaziland, 299 Sweden, 38,70, 203 Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), 131-2 Switzerland, 7 symbolic systems, 85, 87,106-11, 117 Tanganyika, 37, see also Tanzania TANU, 83 Tanzam railway, 41, 84 Tanzania, 37-8, 41, 49, 8 3 ^ , 96, 128, 134, 152, 162, 166, 179, 223, 229 targets, 113 Taylor, Frederick W., 13 Technical Cooperation among Developing

331

Countries (TCDC), 57, 84 technocratism, 18-25, 27, 30, 33-4, 56, 59, 65-6, 67, 85, 87, 88, 94-6,126, 136-7,144-5, 149,184,257 teleology, 11, 34, 56, 212-16, 222, 303 Templer, Sir Gerald, 249 Ten Major Relationships, China, 42 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), USA, 14-15,18,44,53,68,79,107-8,120, 128,130-1,155, 158, 162, 235 Thailand, 36, 275 Thatcher, Margaret, 76 Tinbergen, Jan, 101,121 Tolbert, William, 108 Toure, Sekou, 37 Town and Country Planning Act, 1968 (UK), 76, 80 trades unions,189 tradition, 28, 49, 147, 186, 237, 277, 296 transition, 28-9, 32 Trinidad, 114 Trobriand Islands, 191 Truman, Harry S., 21-2, 53, 80-1,149 Tun Abdul Razak, 242,247,249-52,254-7, 263,287,289 Tungku Abdul Rahman, 241, 249, 254 Tunis symposium, 180 Tupi Guarani Indians, 296 Turkey, 21, 91, 126 Two Initiatives, China, 121,133 Uganda, 16, 28, 67, 95, 152, 168, 178, 187-8,199, 211, 228 Ujamaa programme, Tanzania, 166 Ulu Jempol scheme, Malaysia, 278 Uncle Eric's Children's Help, 70 underdevelopment, 16-17, 26, 48-61, 63, 148 unemployment, 12, 14 United Kingdom, 7,12,19, 25, 34, 38, 50, 53, 63, 70-1, 75-7, 78-84, 112, 114-15, 135-6, 143, 160-1, 163, 176-80,192,195 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 57,83^ United Nations Development Planning Committee, 83 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 69, 71, 74, 83 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 80-1, 92, 157, 179 United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), 69 United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), 83 United Nations Organisation, 23-4, 36, 50,

Index United Nations Organisation (cont.) 57, 60, 69, 71, 74, 79-81, 84, 251 United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), 83 United Nations University, 43 United States Agency for International Development (USAID), 39-40, 45-6, 70-4, 82, 84, 132 United States of America, 7, 9, 13-14, 17, 21-5, 31, 33-4, 39-40, 44, 48, 50, 63-4, 69-74, 77-84, 115-16, 143, 149,161-2, 165, 180, 196, 200, 205, 208, 218-19, 222, 248, 275, 288, 297 urbanisation, 27, 29 Uruguay, 82 Utopian images, 184,191-220,297-8,302-3 van Arkadie, Brian, 96 Venezuela, 78 Vicos project, Peru, 46 Vietnam, 39, 81-2, 275, 288 vigilantes, 287-8 Villa, Pancho, 209-10 Village Agricultural and Industrial Development Projects (V-AID), Pakistan, 44 villagisation, 148, 240, 249, 276-7, and see Ujamaa programme VOLAG, Bangladesh, 69-70

332

Wangala, India, 188 Waterston, A., 86,89,90,94,101,112,114, 117,119,121,126-7,233,250 Weber, Max, 28, 30, 151,153, 218 Welfare State, UK, 19, 79 West Indies, 19-20,79 Williams, Eric, 114 Williams, F.E., 17 Wilson, Woodrow, 78 World Bank, 11, 23-6, 32, 37-8, 43, 45, 51, 57-60, 69-70, 79, 82, 91, 104, 109-10,117-18, 120-1,124,136, 226, 235, 239-40, 246,248, 251, 258, 291 World Food Programme (WFP), 69 World Health Organisation (WHO), 81 world wars, 3,7-8,10-14,16-19,23,35,49, 152,175, 178, 206, 222 Worsley, Peter, 49, 196, 204, 208, 222-30 Wounded Knee massacre, 205 Yoruba,189-90,197 Yugoslavia, 7, 64, 81,103, 112,133,163 Zambia, 41, 84, 96,108 Zapata, Emiliano, 208-11 Zionism, 164

Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology Editor: JACK GOODY

1 The Political Organisation of Unyamwezi R.G. ABRAHAMS

2 Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand* S.J. TAMBIAH

3 Kalahari Village Politics: An African Democracy ADAM KUPER

4 The Rope of Moka: Big-Men and Ceremonial Exchange in Mount Hagen, New Guinea* ANDREW STRATHERN

5 The Majangir: Ecology and Society of a Southwest Ethiopian People JACK STAUDER

6 Buddhist Monk, Buddhist Layman: A Study of Urban Monastic Organisation in Central Thailand JANE BUNNAG

7 Contexts of Kinship: An Essay in the Family Sociology of the Gonja of Northern Ghana ESTHER N. GOODY

8 Marriage among a Matrilineal Elite: A Family Study of Ghanaian Civil Servants CHRISTINE OPPONG

9 Elite Politics in Rural India: Political Stratification and Political Alliances in Western Maharashtra ANTHONY T. CARTER

10 Women and Property in Morocco: Their Changing Relation to the Process of Social Stratification in the Middle Atlas VANESSA MAHER

11 Rethinking Symbolism* DAN SPERBER, Translated by Alice S. Morton 12 Resources and Population: A Study of the Gurungs of Nepal ALAN MACFARANE

13 Mediterranean Family Structures Edited by J.G. PERISTIANY

14 Spirits of Protest: Spirit-Mediums and the Articulation of Consensus among the Zezuru of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) PETER FRY

Cambridge studies in social anthropology 15 World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background* S.J. TAMBIAH

16 Outline of a Theory of Practice* PIERRE BOURDIEU, Translated by Richard Nice 17 Production and Reproduction: A Comparative Study of the Domestic Domain* JACK GOODY

18 Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology* MAURICE GODELIER, Translated by Robert Brain 19 The Fate of Shechem, or the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean JULIAN PITT-RIVERS

20 People of the Zongo: The Transformation of Ethnic Identities in Ghana ENID SCHILDKROUT

21 Casting out Anger: Religion among the Taita of Kenya GRACE HARRIS

22 Rituals of the Kandyan State H.L. SENEVIRATNE

23 Australian Kin Classification HAROLD W. SCHEFFLER

24 The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia STEPHEN HUGH-JONES

25 Nomads of Southern Siberia: The Pastoral Economies of Tuva s.i.vAiNSHTEiN, Translated by Michael Colenso 26 From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal Processes in Northwest Amazonia CHRISTINE HUGH-JONES

27 Day of Shining Red: An Essay on Understanding Ritual GILBERT LEWIS

28 Hunters, Pastoralists and Ranchers: Reindeer Economies and their Transformations TIM INGOLD

29 The Wood-Carvers of Hong Kong: Craft Production in the World Capitalist Periphery EUGENE COOPER

30 Minangkabau Social Formations: Indonesian Peasants and the World Economy JOEL S. KAHN

31 Patrons and Partisans: A Study of Two Southern Italian Communes CAROLINE WHITE

32 Muslim Society*

ERNEST GELLNER

33 Why Marry Her? Society and Symbolic Structures LUC DE HEUSCH, Translated by Janet Lloyd 34 Chinese Ritual and Politics EMILY MARTIN AHERN

35 Parenthood and Social Reproduction: Fostering and Occupational Roles in West Africa ESTHER N. GOODY

Cambridge studies in social anthropology 36 Dravidian Kinship THOMAS R.TRAUTMANN

37 The Anthropological Circle: Symbol, Function, History* MARC AUGE, Translated by Martin Thorn 38 Rural Society in Southeast Asia KATHLEEN GOUGH

39 The Fish-People: Linguistic Endogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia JEAN E. JACKSON

40 Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm* CAROLINE HUMPHREY

41 Ecology and Exchange in the Andes Edited by DAVID LEHMANN

42 Traders without Trade: Responses to Trade in two Dyula Communities ROBERT LAUNAY

43 The Political Economy of West African Agriculture* KEITH HART

44 Nomads and the Outside World AM KHANANOV , Translated by Julia Crookenden 45 Actions, Norms and Representations: Foundations of Anthropological Inquiry* LADISLAV HOLY a n d MILAN STUCHLIK

46 Structural Models in Anthropology PER HAGE and FRANK HARARY 47 Servants of the Goddess: The Priests of a South Indian Temple C.J. FULLER

48 Oedipus and Job in West African Religion MEYER FORTES

* Available as a paperback