Editor's Notes
| Published date | 01 July 1968 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1968.tb00335.x |
| Date | 01 July 1968 |
Editor's Notes
"THE Rural Basefor National Development" was the subject for the 1968
Cambridge Conference on Development which ended on 4th April to the
now traditional strains of the pipes of the Irish Guards. Once again under
Dr. Ronald Robinson's inimitable chairmanship, the participants, many of
international distinction and from many lands and walks of life, successfully
made common purpose over the problems they confronted together and
gained mutual benefit from a fruitful exchange of ideas and experience in
the uninhibiting open forum atmosphere which provides the special melody
of these conferences.
The conclusions reached were hopeful: that modern technology might
well enable many developing countries in the coming decade to meet their
own food requirements and substantial surpluses of farm products besides;
that rural development might yet prove the best success story emerging from
the "development decade". A note of warning was also struck: unless rural
industry was rapidly expanded and the maximum use of labour stimulated,
the very breakthrough to agricultural self-sufficiency which was envisaged
could well lead to a most serious state of rural unemployment with all the
dangers of political unrest that this could imply.
In our Quarterly Notes we include brief Impressions of the Conference
contributed by three of the members attending. Very relevant to the theme
of the Conference are articles which we publish in this Number by Mr.
Pickering who tells how an agricultural breakthrough is being achieved in
the arid lands of Baluchistan, and by Professor Gable on the exploitation of
the Sunderban forests, also in Pakistan.
During the past decade a large number of very small national units have
achieved independence or at least self-governing status. Nearly all of them
had previously depended on the expertise of a metropolitan power for the
management of their public affairs. Now they greatly need advice as how
best to organise their own government departments, but their very "micro"
character as Mr. Geoffrey Burgess points out, in the first contribution,
mitigates against the value of advisers whose own experience and lorresearch
has been concentrated on larger units. There is "a risk of a gap growing
between what the situation and the new clientele of technical assistance need
and what is being presently supplied." Mr. Burgess provides fresh
guidelines which both these countries and their advisers would do well to
bear in mind.
Few political scientists have wider African experience than Professor
Tordoff and we welcome the opportunity to publish the first part of his
article on Provincial and District Government in Zambia - to use the new
nomenclature. The need for the optimum decentralization in planning and
plan implementation has already been stressed by Nigel Heseltine and
others. This is further emphasised by Professor Tordoff who provides
examples of provincial frustration and irritation at delaysand prevarication
at the centre holding up development projects in the field. His spotlight also
B
To continue reading
Request your trial