Sociology of underdevelopment
- Jaipur Rawat publications. 1976
- 422 p.
This treatise presents one major philosophy of development. In the face of millions of largely uncontrolled births, the shortage of food is already beginning to be felt in such countries as Russia, China, India, Africa, Turkey, South America and elsewhere. During good years they still have sufficient food, but during bad years they quickly use up the rves. In 1962-63-64 they also used the wheat carryovers in the local reserves. exporting countries of Australia, Argentina, the United States and Can ade. Each year means there are millions more to feed; at present grain is piled up everywhere in the Canadian prairies and the farmers do not understand that it is only a few years until there is another, even more drastic, shortage than earlier in this decade. Population control, in spite of millions of dollars spent on it each year, is a long way from success. In some countries the chances for mass starvation by 1980-85 are very great at present, even if we have good results both in increased food production and population control. In this book it is emphasized that the people must immediately develop their local food resources. Once they do this if they do they will have some leeway to take certain other measures such as controlling population or developing industry.
There seems no point in giving these nations resources for a broad program on many fronts if they are slow in producing food to feed them selves. Mexico and Taiwan have shown that even countries with limited production can, if they use suitable methods, feed their own people. A number of others with almost unlimited resources constantly beg for imported food because of carelessness, callousness, or bureaucratic in difference. In India, where irrigated acres should produce 3 crop yields per year, they produce less than 1.3. Our purpose is to show that the basic sociology of development should differ in every country. Why should people in Peru, for instance, import food? Or people in Colombia or Venezuela be on very limited diets? This is a scholarly book which should be useful as a text in many universities. It is noteworthy because of the outstanding quality of the contributors; its writers are sociologists who have given much of their lifetimes to fieldwork on rural development in one or more of these underdeveloped areas.