South Asian Developmental Crisis (Review Article)

Like nations and civilizations, sciences also pass throughperiod of crises when established theories are overthrown by theunpredictable behaviour of events. Economics is passing through such acrisis. The challenge thrown by the Great Depression of early 1930s tooka decade before Keynes re-established the supremacy of economics. Butthis supremacy has again been upset by the crisis of poverty in the vastunder-developed world which attained political independence after theSecond World War. Poverty had always existed but never before had itbeen of such concern to economists as during the past twenty five yearsor so. Economic literature dealing with this problem has piled up but sohave the agonies of poverty. No plausible and well-integrated theory ofeconomic development or under-development has emerged so far, thoughbrilliant advances have been made in isolated directions.