Description
HABENT SUA FATA LIBELLI-books have their own destiny, even while they are being written and before they are published. Often, the simplest way of explaining what a book is about and what it aims to achieve is to tell why and how it came to be written.
After the Second World War I became increasingly interested in the economic problems of the underdeveloped countries. This was not in any way an extraordinary and original bent of mind; it followed closely the general reorientation of the social sciences in the post-war period on which I comment in Section 2 of the Prologue to this book. The same inclination manifested itself in the secretariat of the Economic Commission for Europe, which came into being in the spring of 1947 with myself at the head. Its work was to a considerable extent oriented toward the study of the development problems of the underdeveloped countries in Southern and Eastern Europe; it also investigated similar problems outside Europe in cooperation with the secretariats of the Economic Commissions for Asia and the Far East and for Latin America.
In connection with the E.C.E.'s particularly close cooperation with ECAFE and at the instigation of P. S. Lokanathan, who was then Executive Secretary of ECAFE, I made a six-weeks' tour of South Asia in the autumn of 1953, visiting Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, and Indonesia.
I had consultations with my colleagues on the ECAFE staff in Bangkok, with government officials, and with other indigenous and foreign experts at the universities and in the field; as is my custom, I also visited industries and villages. In short, in the limited time available I tried in every way to familiarize myself with the economic, social, and political problems of the countries in the region. Since that visit I have never been free of an intense awareness of the momentous human drama of the desperate strivings for national consolidation and economic development in the South Asian countries. I decided then that as soon as I could free myself with good conscience from my duties with the E.C.E., I would return for a couple of years to these countries and devote myself to studying their problems of economic underdevelopment, development, and planning for development.
ISBN:ASIANDRAMAGUN
