Economics of regional development and planning in third world countries.

LITERATURE on development economics and planning is no more scarce. However, literature on economics of regional development and planning is still not adequate though there has been a great upsurge of interest in the field, in recent times. The Western output of literature in the broad field of what is known as Regional Economics and Planning is quite impressive.

The countries of the Third World are late starters in the field of regional planning, because until mid-sixties most of them were largely under the magic spell of economic growth theories based on neo-classical presumptions or their diverse modern ramifications. The disenchantment with those theories started, when it was realised that the outcome has been more of poverty for the people along with higher growth rates for the nation.

The remedy to poverty problem is not limited only to inter-personal distribution of income and wealth. It has a spatial dimension too. As people remain poor due to lack of opportunities to participate in productive activities, similarly people of some regions remain more deprived on account of those regions' failure to participate effectively in national development efforts. This failure is common both to developed industrialised countries and developing primary producing countries. However, reasons for their failures are not same.

The developed countries of the West are the early starters in the field of town and regional planning. The urban oriented concepts of growth techniques, strategies, and policies develop ed in those countries may be relevant to the regional problems of more urbanised and growing industrial economies. When those are exported wholesale, like sophisticated technologies to the Third World countries, they become not only irrelevant to completely different situations altogether, the outcome often is bewilderment and more distress for the common people.