Rural reconstruction and development : a manual for field workers

No true citizen of the world can fail to be troubled by the grim reality that nearly 1,700 mil lion people living in the villages and hamlets of Asia, Latin America, and Africa are "eating bitter ness." They are eating the bitterness of hunger and ignorance, disease and helplessness. For genera tions, they have been victims of indifference and neglect and, too often, of exploitation and oppres sion.

A vast majority among them are caught in a cycle of frustration and misery from which they do not know how to extricate themselves. What they lack, in most cases, is not native intelligence or the will to work, but opportunity, especially the opportunity to learn.

They do not have the fairly simple knowledge and the fairly simple technical skills they require in order to start their long climb toward economic, se curity, dignity, health, and responsible citizenship. They need help in acquiring this knowledge and thes skills, and we, the privileged among their fellow. countrymen and in the wealthier nations, have only. begun to learn how to give it to them. With all our vaunted advances in science and technology, and all the tools of education and communication now avail able to us, we are not yet closing the yawning gap between the poor and the rich in most of the develop ing societies, or that between the poor nations and the rich nations. Indeed, instead of shrinking, these gaps are growing wider.

One thing we can be sure of is that this problem will not go away if, preoccupied with our own con cerns, we simply ignore it. Vast populations growing faster than their ability to produce food and other essentials, expanding gulfs between the privileged and the despairing, and mounting discontent among hundreds of millions who are not willing to wait in definitely for a fair deal--all of these hings bad news for the entire human race.