3.
The evolution of the concept of development planning
122
Shortly after the Second World War many European countries were faced with the need for post-war reconstruction; in market economy countries the experience of economic controls established during the war and the frequent interventions of public authorities in current economic processes prepared the ground for the acceptance of a new type of economic planning with a distinctly dynamic element in
it.
was
The content of development planning, in the early stages at least, essentially economic and the definition of the development plan as a "document which sets out the chief measures that the government intends to take in order to raise national output per person"1 leaves no one in
doubt as to the nature of this exercise, The innovation introduced by development planning was a comprehensive review of public expenditures looking several years ahead, with publication of a priority list; it is this medium-range projection of expenditures which was considered to be the main object of development planning. With time, however, the emphasis of development planning has tended to shift away from the review of government expenditures toward other measures designed to raise the rate of economic growth. The national economy as a whole has become the object of an economic survey where as much attention is paid to the development of different industries as to government expenditure.2
The move from purely economic considerations in development planning began as people came to admit the more complex nature of the concept of development, particularly as a result of experience in low-income countries.
The importance of the role of education in the development process soon became apparent and even if some economists may tend to consider it, narrowly, as a factor in the growth of national income3, the impact of education as a non-economic aspect of development could hardly be overlooked.
Similarly, it did not take long to realise that, under the conditions of chronic unemployment in developing countries, priority should be given to building up industries, to labour-intensive techniques providing income from employment to larger numbers of people, disregarding the law of economic efficiency which would normally apply in industrialised countries.
The need for balancing economic growth in different geographical regions of а developing country also led to policies which, in the short run at least, are in conflict with the attainment of the highest economic returns that could be obtained from investing in more developed regions.
We can thus see that it is the natural concern of governments with the human component of economic processes which led to the modification of the original economic theories based, to a great extent, on the experience of industrialised countries.
Gradually, new lessons were learned by the development planners. They were obliged to realise that, in addition to economic growth, in the low-income countries involved in the complex process of building national independence, political, social and economic development implies changing structures, establishing new ways of doing things and developing new organisations. •
The
It thus became obvious that development was concerned with some essential functions of society which cannot be explained by the laws of economic science only and the study of which requires a much broader and multidisciplinary approach. experience has also shown the predominance of the political aspect in development planning and brought home the fact that any decision making concerning development is essentially political with economic factors representing just one aspect of the
1 See W. Arthur Lewis, the chapter on Development Planning in The International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, p. 118.
2 Cf. W. Arthur Lewis, ibid.
3 Cf. Dudley Seers: "The Meaning of Development", in International Development
Review, No. 4, 1969, p. 5.
• See Nancy Baster: "Development Indicators: Development Studies, April 1972, p. 2.
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